


the wishbone theory

by velvetcrowbars



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (Hilda voice) Claude wrote this with his dick, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mental Health Issues, OP clearly being in love with Dimitri, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, featuring:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2020-12-07 21:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20983001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcrowbars/pseuds/velvetcrowbars
Summary: “I’m doing a story on you.”Dimitri’s confused expression emerges from his towel, his face still damp and flushed. His breathing’s steadying, and the sun beats down in a relentless attempt to drive them all back inside. Not that it stops the varsity soccer team from running suicides until they puke, or, in Dimitri’s case, until he sweats off his golden boy coating to look a little bit more like the rest of them.“Me?” Dimitri’s puzzlement is as confounding as it is genuine. “Why?”Claude, new head of the school newspaper, takes an interest in star athlete Dimitri Blaiddyd and, in a twist of fate no one could've predicted, finds himself at the center of something much bigger than himself. Not that Claude minds.





	1. the bell tower test

**Author's Note:**

> ok..........this got, a little out of hand. hm
> 
> so this was never supposed to be this long. or. .. .intricate. i just wanted to write something funny but dimiclaude grabbed me by the throat and won't let go. so here i remain, bound to my fate.
> 
> not sure when updates will be? but this is tagged appropriately for the future, most of it is plotted out and written so (god willing) won't be dragged out for too too long. who knows tho! not me that's for sure!
> 
> anyway! enjoy part one

There’s a rumor about the chapel hall roof at Mach Prep.

Or, it may be more appropriate to call it a ghost story. A myth, a legend, a simple old wives’ tale – take your pick. There’s varying stages of agreement as to what the rumor itself might be, as rumors have a tendency to snatch the leash from your hands and run loose and wild, whether you want them to or not. Small town, and all that. Small town, big money, and too many kids with too much time on their hands to be doing anything _ not _troublesome. You’re either there because of parental connections, wealth, or some trepid combination of both – and there’s little in between, for the most part.

Or, that’s what Claude’s heard, anyway.

But back to the matter at hand. The chapel roof, in the big scheme of things, is just another tangled stem of ivy twisting up the old red brick walls. Another piece of southern gothic history in a school where history’s all they care about - yet it snares him all the same, captures and holds his attention with a single-minded intensity in a way the other stories do not. 

Somebody had jumped. A typical tale for a boarding school with a 300-year history and the aesthetic to match. Some say jumped, others say pushed – the end result of a haunted school building is the same no matter what. It’s the tallest and oldest one on campus, complete with an old copper bell tower that only the brave and inebriated dare climb up the narrow, crumbling stairs to reach. Some say, when the wind comes howling down from the hillside, the bell will toll all on its own, as if rung by frothy, ghost print hands.

Right – _ ghosts_. Definitely not something else even more strange and supernatural, like the wind.

Judith asks about it in all but words, when the silence stretches on for a beat too long. She’d requested he call after the plane landed, and despite his teenage rebellion telling him not to, he’d found himself too prematurely homesick not to oblige her, even if for just a few minutes. The breath he heaves as soon as he steps out of the plane is a sigh of relief, and his phone jitters with a slew of old notifications ringing themselves in after his airplane-mode absence. 

The airport’s like a kicked ant hill in the hours of early mid-morning. Everyone’s a certain degree of frantic to get where they’re going, and many don’t care if it means stepping on someone else so long as they themselves don’t end up getting crushed. Claude spends twenty minutes in line for the bathroom, twenty more squeezing his way through the train terminals. By the time he’s actually talking to Judith, post-flight exhaustion is really kicking him while he’s down. 

“What’s on your mind, kid?”

He laughs it off, then, too busy struggling to pull one of his two scuffed duffels from the luggage carousel to speak. Even if he were to talk, the sentences may not be coherent in his usual fun, irreverent manner - which Judith would latch onto instantly, and not let go. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. His head’s a jumble of thoughts he’d spent the whole six hour flight trying to compartmentalize, put up into boxes for safe storage. 

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” he says to the scuffed black tops of his sneakers, catching his breath. “It’s nothing.”

Because some things are better left to be examined at a later date. Or, not at all. 

Things like: the fact his grandfather won’t give him money for college unless he graduates from his own boarding school alma mater. The fact that his parents _ agree _ with him. The fact that Claude’s now thousands of miles from anything he’s ever known, without his explicit consent, and about to be stuck for _ another _ two-hour car ride to a tiny, wealthy backwoods town nestled in the mountains where they still _ have _things like haunted school buildings.

And staring up at the popcorn ceiling from his new, stripped bare bed, in his new, empty dorm room, in the middle of an empty campus soaked in late afternoon light, he finds himself unwilling to even so much as touch those boxes, let alone unpack them. Both those scattered around the room, and in his head. 

The drive hadn’t been terrible - his chauffeur a long-time professor with a faint trimming of beard across his chin and a knack for stiff, polite conversation. The car was maroon and noiseless. He’d spent most of the ride staving off some horrible combination of altitude and motion sickness. The silent engine and snippets of the driver’s unobtrusive questions provided optimal conditions for Claude to sink down into the swamp of his own mind and rot for a while. 

Only now he’s stuck here, his mind floating somewhere high above his body. He misses the smell of his mother’s laundry detergent and the warm ball of Barbarossa curled on his belly, and here when he swings his feet from the bed they don’t quite meet the floor. They just dangle. Suspended. His clothes still smell like stale air and sweat, but it feels such a waste to change out of his last piece of home so soon.

So, Claude does what he does best in stressful situations. He gets up, climbs out the window, and looks for trouble.

-

The school itself is a sprawl of red clay brick buildings, towering and traditional until you open the doors. That’s where the real money is, the old interior gutted out for the sleek and modern. It’s boring, if anyone were to ask Claude of his opinion – no one has yet, but he’s sure it’s bound to come up. After all, the only thing the rich love to talk about more than themselves, is their money. Their money, and all the ways they love to spend it. 

How their parents love to spend it, that is. 

He’d watched all the virtual tours of the place he could get his hands on, even scrounged blurry, pixelated images of the school through the trees on Google maps. Their collective assembly hardly compares to the real thing. 

The paths are all clean, new cement, freshly power washed. He sticks to the grass, plush green and cooling with the air, the breeze tripping down in gusts from the mountain hedging them in. Claude tugs his jacket tighter to keep it from creeping under his clothes. Classes don’t start for another four days, and the sheer, vast silence of an empty campus is as eerie as it is comforting. 

On one hand - no one here to tell him no. On the other - _ no one here to tell him no. _

It doesn’t take long to find the building he’s after: the steeple slices through the treetops and into the sky, a sharpened spire caught in a sharp upswing. The chapel itself rises up six stories, the floor level a vast expanse of space full of the typical church wares – none of which are of any particular interest to Claude. It’s a nice surprise to find the great carved door swinging wide open when he tries it. He’d assumed he’d be relegated to the window again, and the ones ringing the chapel are mostly stained glass - which would be a real shame. 

Inside, Claude runs his fingertips along the pews as he walks down the aisle, the rich wood coated in a thin layer of summertime dust. Dying light streaks through the windows, casting kaleidoscopes of iridescent light on the columns leading to the back of the chapel. The saints smile down in all their sharp-edged, brilliantly colorful and empty benevolence. Claude almost pauses to admire them, but only almost. 

To his surprise, the door down the hall to the upper levels opens too, with a small, breathy squeak.

He climbs up the stairwell two steps at a time, pausing at each floor landing for the simple sake of gathering information. Faculty offices, spare storage rooms, a couple of empty classrooms – nothing enough to pull his attention away from the task at hand. He climbs four floors before reaching the top, and when he shakes the handle it sticks for a second before the rusting hinges crack open with a screech. 

Weird, but he’s not about to question good luck while he’s got it. 

The roof is sun-bleached, bare, flat and full of sky. Here the wind whips in stronger gusts, but the air is warm and pleasant, baking in the last rays of sun. Aside from a few stacks of ancient folding chairs, old school play props left to rot in the rain, and a smattering of leaves, the roof is empty. At the far end, the bell tower looms, its great crooked shadow slanting over the concrete. 

His shoes scrape as he walks, moving in slow circles, face turned up. In his pocket, his phone gives a low hum. He ignores it for now – gaze taking in the darkening sky, hungry, like a starving man. It’s the first thing he’d noticed in the drive through the narrow mountain roads. Here, the trees crowd out any glimpse of blue, claustrophobic compared to the sweeping plains, and it’s not that he’s already homesick, he just missed how _ big _the sky could be and–

From the corner of his eye, the shadow of the bell tower moves.

Maybe that’s not quite right – the shadow doesn’t move so much as it does change shape for the fraction of an instant, as if shifting from within. Claude freezes, foot half-twisted behind him, all of his guts clenching in a base, animal hindbrain instinct.

_ No, _ he thinks, into the disbelieving echo chamber of his own head. _ No, no, no. No. Absolutely not. _

He waits for a moment, before daring to move again, ensuring his footsteps now are careful and silent. The far less logical part of his brain says to turn tail and book it back down the stairs, while the other half, decidedly _ not _in flight mode, has a far better idea.

In typical _ killed the cat _fashion, Claude slinks closer. He doesn’t think about the way Hilda would laugh if she saw him creeping around an empty rooftop, treading light on the balls of his feet so as not to startle – well, he hoped there wouldn’t be anything to startle up here in the first place. But it’s always better to err on the side of caution.

So what if the chapel roof’s haunted? He’s seen spookier.

The closer he draws to the bell tower’s base, the greater the choke of apprehension rises in his throat. It stretches up farther than he realized, looking at it from far away. Closer to the tower of brick itself the shadow looms, the wear of rain and snow on its structure apparent, chipping away in a slow, losing war with erosion. It isn’t until Claude ducks out of its shadow, skirts around closer to the front, that he sees it.

Well, not an it. A _ him_.

His foot, anyway, swinging in a gentle tap atop the tower’s lip, the rest obscured by the supportive pillar’s stony height. All Claude’s able to make out is the long, toned length of leg, and an athletic shoe that no doubt costs more than half of his closet. It’s scandalous, in a way, and suddenly Claude understands all those old stuffy poems about ankles being the height of erotica when it was all one was permitted to see.

This outing’s turning out to be more promising than he ever could’ve imagined.

Claude sets his hands down on the roof’s low brick barricade, leans forward, and aims his voice up.

“I thought it was weird that the doors were unlocked!”

There’s a scream – a choked off noise caught somewhere between shrill and guttural. The leg kicks, a startled hand wraps around the pillar, long fingers grappling with the gapes in the brick laying. Claude leans, perhaps a little too far, over the edge just to see a flash of gold catching like a coin against the fading afternoon sun.

Claude squints up, and the boy’s face, when does find Claude from down below, is a careful blank slate filled in with surprise, that golden hair wind-ruffled, sticking to one cheek. His features are left indistinct by the distance, but even from far below Claude can see the wide, breathless light of his eyes beneath his brow. There’s a beat of silence filled with direct eye contact that makes Claude weirdly giddy.

“Sorry!” He calls up again. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Another few seconds of silence, of Claude smiling up at the boy in the bell tower, hoping to show that he means no harm. Maybe not _ no _harm but – not much, anyway. Although difficult to see the precise details of his expression, there’s a level of scrutiny to bell tower boy’s stare that seems equal parts confused and wary, like a cat thought to be fleeing a dog only to turn and find a mouse. Claude’s about to speak again, likely to shove his foot even further into his own mouth, when he sees a hand raise, an index finger pointing up.

Claude cocks his head, a bit confused himself until the arm grasping the brick disappears, and Claude watches with no small bit of fascination as those long limbs scale down the tower face. Claude leans down onto his elbow, a little impressed, a little frightened. He watches him until he disappears around the opposite corner, resisting the urge to sprint around the tower just to get another glimpse of him. 

He walks, instead – because it’s not like his curiosity is poking and prodding at the door, begging to be let in. It’s just, not every day you see someone climb down the face of a wall with their bare hands, and well. Between that and the sensual, sinewy line of where ankle meets leg, Claude feels a very simple man.

So, maybe he’s a _ little _ intrigued. _ Sue him._

Claude rounds the corner, and just barely avoids smacking himself into almost six solid feet of _ person _, the sound of their feet scrambling away just in time to avoid collision bouncing over the rooftop. Time narrows down to the spike of his pulse, palms tingling where Claude braces himself near his abdomen. There’s a grip that clasps around his forearms with a strength just shy of painful, and then he’s looking up, farther than he thought he’d have to and – oh.

Those eyes. If Claude could be staggering backwards he would. He’d fall straight back all the way over the low wall on the roof’s opposite end, tumble the six stories down until all he sees is sky. Because if Claude were to pick a name, if he could make a paint color out of those eyes he’d call it something like “_Forget-me-not Blue”_, or “_The Sky on a Long Walk Home”._

_ They’re just blue, _ the very small part of him that hates dramatics, says. _ Yeah, but saying they’re just _ ** _blue_ ** _ wouldn’t be any fun, right? _

How is that real, anyway? Does the paint bucket tool work like that in real life? 

Bell tower boy’s chin is tilting down, his hair falling like clumps of yellow marigolds across his forehead and catching on the long, proud line of his nose. His mouth’s stuck in a state of surprise, open until he snaps it shut, lips pursing down into a firm, crooked line across his face. It happens a few times more, and the indecision is written all over his symmetrical little face. He smells a bit like sweat and fresh laundry detergent – something chemical in the way he breathes. Claude keeps looking up at him, feeling a little weird and weightless with a stranger’s arms anchoring him a few inches above the ground.

He’s handsome – in an _ Ivy League boy you take home to your parents _ kinda way. Slap on a button down and some khakis the color of modesty and he just screams, _ “Yes, sir, I’ll have your daughter home by eleven”._

Which is why, perhaps, Claude shouldn’t open his mouth right now. Perhaps he’ll think on this later, in the privacy of his own head, and wonder: _ what in God’s name were you thinking? _

Later, maybe. But right now? It sounds like a great idea. Claude feels the words fall out of his mouth before he’s the time to think twice. 

“Well _ hello _ to you, too.” 

Whether the tone of his voice, or the curving innuendo pressing to the corner of Claude’s lips, it seems to break through the layer of ice freezing the boy in place.

“Are you–” he blurts out, loud before startling, reconsidering. The next word is a touch softer. “Alright?” 

_ Interesting reaction, _his mind supplies above the din. Claude gives his best smile – the one he knows won’t make him uneasy. “More than alright. Well, I will be. Once you put me down.” 

“Oh!” The vice grip disappears in a burning instant, hasty, and Claude’s heels tap back on solid ground. “Oh, of course, I am – I am so sorry.”

Claude’s shimmies his arms further down his jacket sleeves, adjusting the fall of it around his shoulders. “No worries. I’m the one who should be apologizing, anyway.”

The way the nervous twitch tugs at his lips is obvious. A blatant declaration. “No, no, don’t be foolish. I truly didn’t intend to–” He looks down. Swallows so thick Claude sees it go down. “Grab you in such a manner.”

“Well, _ I _ really didn’t mean to scare you,” Claude looks down at those stupid fancy shoes before flicking back up to his eyes. “_Again.”_

“Oh, it’s alright, you didn’t–” He smiles but it doesn’t get far. His teeth are straight as can be; the most perfect, opulent shade of white. “I was startled, that’s all. The wind is strong up there. I couldn’t really hear you, so–”

The words trail off, and Claude watches the unsure way his hands move, trying to find a place to land on his elbows, his hips, behind his back. The nerves must be contagious – he has to fight them out of his own casual stance, arms crossed, weight leaned to the left. It feels like a crime to just leave his words hanging there. Claude does his best to pick up where he’d left off.

“I imagine. Bet you weren’t expecting any company up here, too.”

He keeps looking down. “Admittedly, no.”

“I wasn’t either. At first I thought you were a ghost.”

“...A ghost?”

“Yeah, you know. Ye old vengeful spirit, dead under mysterious, maybe murderous circumstances. Rings the bell because apparently it’s got nothing better to do. That sorta thing.”

“Oh.” He tries a smile again but it keeps falling off. “I haven’t heard that story in years. They used to tell it all the time before our freshmen year. It frightened my friend so much it gave him nightmares.”

“Rightfully so! Well, that’s what I thought at least. You’re much too strong to be dead.”

“Oh,” he says again, the tone turned downwards. “I suppose that’s true.”

“You _suppose_?” Claude wonders for a brief moment if he’s caught that right. The other boy’s still fidgeting to a distracting degree – and something tells Claude’s feet to start moving before his mind has the wherewithal to catch up.

He slides a step closer. Bell tower boy stays still, as if he’d grown roots into the concrete. 

“I just watched you scale down the side of a building _ and _ lift me off the ground in the span of two minutes and you _ suppose_?”

“It isn’t that impressive.”

“Agree to disagree, then, _spider monkey_.”

At that, Claude starts walking in earnest. Where, and for what reason he’s not really sure – but something about watching the other boy attempt to stand there, juggling his weight and jittering fingers is enough motivation to get him up and moving. Claude sidles past, holding his arms in close, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.

“Come on.” He jerks his head. “I came up here for a ghost, but the view can’t be that bad, right?”

There’s a handful of seconds filled with nothing but the soft pat of his own sneakers, and he’s ready to shrug it off, having thrown his two cents into the fountain of this pretty boy’s thoughts and gotten but a ripple in return – but then he dares a glance back.

And to Claude’s frank astonishment, he’s following. To Claude’s even greater shock, he looks like he has something to say.

“My father,” he starts, his inhale quick and sharp as he matches Claude’s meandering pace. “He used to take my rock climbing when I was little. Quite often, actually.”

“Ah, that makes sense. You must’ve been pretty good at that, too.”

He shakes his head, emphatic. “Not particularly, no.”

“C’mon,” Claude throws his hands up in defeat. “I can count on one hand the amount of people I know who can do what you just did. On like, two fingers actually, because I know it’s only two. Tops.”

It earns him a huff of a laugh. The wind whips up in the same second to snatch it away, which is a bit disappointing. It’s a nice laugh.

“Well, around here, anyway, it isn’t too unusual.”

“Around here, huh?” Claude turns his gaze up. He can sense the other boy’s gaze roving over his features, brazen and unwatched. Claude blinks, flicking his eyes over just in time to catch him in the act for an unguarded moment, the brilliant blue of his irises there one second and gone the next.

He’s obvious in a way Claude hasn’t encountered in, well. _ Ever._ It’s a nice change of pace. It’s almost enough to make him feel just a little bit smug.

“You’re new, I take it?” bell tower boy asks, his voice in the shape of small talk. “What grade?”

“Senior.” Claude keeps looking up, watching a cloud morph from whale to bunny rabbit, depending on the angle and degree of squint. “Fresh off the plane this morning, actually. How’d you know?” 

“It’s a relatively small school. Most of us have been in attendance since we were freshmen. Besides–” A pause. Claude tilts his head, finally does look at him in earnest. “I think I’d remember you. If we had met before.”

_ Well, _ he thinks, around the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. _ Isn’t that unexpected_.

“You would?” He says, without any serious question mark tacked on the end. The words are an invitation, not an inquiry.

The realization, and all its insinuations, doesn’t seem to get through bell tower boy’s pretty noggin in the slightest. Doesn’t so much as come close to gracing his thoughts, as far as Claude can tell. He gives a perplexed look. Brow raising, disappearing under the chopped, uneven fall of his hair.

“Well,” he says with serious consideration, scratching at his fingers, picking around the red of his nails until he balls his hands into fists. When he speaks again, his voice is steadier. “As I said before, it’s a small school. Our graduating class is only a hundred people or so. Everyone knows everyone.”

_ Everyone knows everyone. _ Claude turns those particular words over in his head a few times before putting them away to look at later.

“Oh, is that it?” He says as they reach the low top of the roof edge. Claude sits without hesitation, leans back on his hands and stretches his legs, crossing his ankles. “I thought you were going to say something more along the lines of _ I’d never forget a face as handsome as yours,_ all Prince Charming style. But, small class size makes sense too, I guess.”

Claude’s looking him direct in the face when he says it – and, really, he has no right to be feeling this bold. Yet their shared attentive gaze, tentative and flighty as it is, stokes the warm pit settling in the cradle of his chest.

Claude tilts his head. The boy blinks back at him from where he stands, as if he’d just been stunned by a flash of light too quick for a timely reaction. The wind blows another gust, strong enough to ruffle his hair into his eyes, draw him to push it back.

He’s got his hand still threaded through his bangs, smile unsure but unmistakably _there _when he says, a bit incredulous, “_Prince Charming_?”

“Yeah,” Claude leans on one arm, wilting to the side. “I’m thinking the one in _ Cinderella, _in particular.”

“_Cinderella,_” he sighs as he sit down, like Claude’s drawn-in mirror, his limbs gathered closer, tighter. “Isn’t his hair more…” There’s a moment of set-face contemplation, his thumb brushing his lip before he turns his head and says, “…brown?”

They look at each other. His expression is utterly, completely serious. Inquisitive, even, seeking Claude’s evident approval.

Claude really can’t help it – he busts out laughing. It rises in him, unbidden and unexpected. Big, raucous laughter that shakes his stomach, borders on the pleasant side of painful. _ What an idea to have. What a thing to say._

“Sorry,” Claude huffs, the laugh still bubbling up his throat. “Sorry, I just, wasn’t expecting–” He clears his throat. “No, of course. You’re absolutely right. I haven’t seen the movie in a while, so I forgot.”

“I don’t see why it’s so funny,” Is what he says in response, but the smile fighting its way across his face says otherwise. “That’s just how I remember it.”

“Just how you remember it?”

“Yes.”

“How many times have you seen _ Cinderella_, exactly?”

His mouth opens. Shuts. He sits up a little straighter. “Enough to know.”

And that gets Claude laughing again. Only this time he has the awareness to rein it in before it gets away from him. He stifles it into his fist – and this time around is better for more reasons than one when he catches bell tower boy laughing, too. Claude doesn’t look at him too long, lacking any kind of directness he might point at someone else. His head tilts back and Claude watches the pale stretch of his neck, his shoulders hardly shaken with the way he holds his gentle laughter in. Claude follows his gaze up, twisting his head back to look at the view as the silence, eventually, fills in around their breathing.

It’s been a while since he’s had this much fun.

With a scrape against the cement, Claude swings his legs over the edge, nothing under his feet but seven stories of empty air. Bracing on his hands again, he leans forward, peering down at the green below, the twisting sidewalks cutting their way through like lines of pale chalk. The sun’s begun to set in earnest now, melting over the mountains in a boiling glow of bright creamsicle orange on the horizon. The whole campus stretches out to every corner of the valley, the last tendrils of sun streaking across it in clawed fingers of light.

“Well I’ll be,” he breathes. “You can see the edge of the world from up here.” 

Silence serves as his answer for a long pause, and he knows they’re both staring out at the same moment, seeing the same shadows pressing around the trees.

“Yes,” Quiet, a whisper of a mutter. Claude almost doesn’t catch it. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it.”

“It is.”

They sit and let the sun lapse over them, a short few seconds turned to minutes, passing through his fingers like water. The breeze stills, swirls lower over the tree branches, crackling and quaking. He doesn’t take his eyes off the sky. Neither of them do. It could go on for hours like this, for all Claude knows – he’s never been great at keeping track, sometimes so caught up in his own head he misses meals, skips out on sleep. Maybe they’d fallen into a pocket outside of time entirely. It’s a place that still believes in ghosts, where everyone knows everyone. _ Anything _ is possible. 

“I see why you came up here now,” Claude breaks the wind-filled silence. “What a great hiding spot.”

He’s hesitating – Claude knows it without even having to look. “Is that why–?” 

Claude snorts. “Well, partially. I wasn’t lying when I mentioned the ghost, or the view. So, all of the above, I guess. I like to keep my options open.”

“So, that’s what you were truly looking for? A place to hide?”

“First thing I do whenever I get to a new place,” he says, a little surprised himself by how easy the truth comes. “Everyone needs somewhere to go where they can think. Just, be alone with their thoughts for a while.”

“Really?” 

“What? Don’t think so?” Claude takes a deep breath, the air chilled enough to singe his lungs. “I’m a strong believer that if you don’t have _ some _ means of escape you’re bound to lose your mind. At least a little bit.” 

“Hm.” Claude turns his head in time to see him tuck a tangled knot of yellow hair behind his ear. “I’d…never thought about it that way before.” 

Claude watches him now, a reversal of their previous arrangement. There’s an odd cadence to how he breathes, not unsteady or nervous, per say, but long and heavy. As if he’s breathing deep not to get much in return. Claude watches the light drip down his nose from the corner of his eye, and it feels as brazen as staring him straight in the face. A fact he’s aware of with a sudden, sharp acuteness.

“You say the strangest things, you know that?” he says, gripping the gritted stone of his seat. 

A huff, and there’s that hesitation again, like he doesn’t know the acceptable time to turn his card over, reveal the secret underneath. “I’ve been told as much.”

“Well–”

The sound of a phone ringing at full volume makes Claude’s heart lurch an uncomfortable degree _ up, _his whole body jumping along with it, and then that hold is grabbing at his elbow again, just like before. It isn’t until Claude realizes how precariously forward he’s begun to lean that he whips his head to meet the other boy’s gaze – so wide and stricken and blue it makes Claude dizzy.

Or, maybe that’s just the vertigo from his near fatal drop. Either way–

The phone’s still ringing. It’s all Claude can hear, and his eyes dart all over to spot a pocket, or hidden place under the waistband of his athletic shorts. Bell tower boy hasn’t let go of him, yet. His grip strength is truly incredible, and under any other circumstances, Claude might be into it. Maybe. The words are forming on his traitorous tongue, but fortunately he manages to stuff them away in time to prevent anything from escaping. Hilda would never let him live if she knew what he was thinking about.

After this moment of deep self-reflection, he lifts a delicate brow. “You gonna get that?”

The words don’t appear to register at first, between the slow blinking stillness, but it’s impossible to tell whether it’s due to racing thoughts or the subsequent lack of them. “Uh.”

Claude gives a tentative smile, just an upturn at the corner of his mouth, and that seems to do the trick. The hold on him disappears quick as it came, apologies covering the air. Claude watches the imprint of his fingers on the fabric relax as he digs for his phone, bright screen lighting his face a shocked white as he swipes to answer it.

“Hello?” A beat goes by, two. The taut line of his mouth doesn’t relax, only tangles and collapses in on itself when he continues. “I’m…at school.”

He can’t hear a voice on the other end of the line, and Claude would like to pretend he isn’t listening at all – but that would be silly, considering their proximity. He does the body language equivalent of giving privacy, keeps his gaze averted, tilts his chin down and away.

Doesn’t mean Claude’s going to go so far as to plug his ears, though.

“No, no it’s truly alright. I can drive back.” Pause. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll call you when I get in the car.” He’s picking at his fingers again. With a careful look from under his lashes Claude can see a drop of blood well up where he’d shorn the skin clean off the side of his thumb. It’s smearing all over his forefinger. “I promise. Alright. Okay, you too. Goodbye.”

Claude straightens, tugging his smile up again. Claude waits for him to speak, to so much as look up from where he’s glued his gaze to the ground far below. He does, after a handful of breaths, a hair shy of a sigh.

“I’m sorry, I – I have to go.” he says, and if Claude were to twist it just the right way the words might sound disappointed. 

He hurries to stand, not giving Claude the time to formulate a response. Claude’s eyes follow him. He seems to be debating, teeth worrying his lower lip before he offers: “I can walk you back? I don’t want you getting lost.”

“I’ll be alright,” Claude taps his temple. “Got a memory like an elephant. I’d like to stay up here a little longer, anyway.” 

“O-Oh. I see.” 

“Don’t worry,” Claude says, because he needs something else to say. “I’m sure we’ll see each other around, right? Small school and all that.” 

“That’s true,” he nods, shifting his weight from right to left, back to right. He’s holding his elbows, practically hugging them in, and there’s something crumpled in it despite the practiced, drawn up straight line of his posture. Claude almost squints at him, as if he were a cloud that may change its form with a different degree of focus, or maneuvering. The silence is heavy. Claude doesn’t look away this time. 

“Please, don’t–” He says all in a hurry, takes a moment to reorganize, stuff his trembling hands in his pockets. “Don’t tell anybody I was up here. Please.”

_ So that’s it-? _ Claude inclines his head, a question mark.

“It may be even better to...pretend we haven’t met. I apologize, I don’t wish to be rude-”

“No, I get it,” Claude says, even if he does not, entirely, _ get it_. But he can hedge a guess as best as the rest of them. “Don’t wanna be associated with the weird new kid?”

“That isn’t it at all! Trust me, I-” 

Claude wants very much to interject, and he usually would, but the pleading urgency bleeding underneath the words tapes down his tongue. So Claude watches with a kept degree of apprehension, gaze falling between the stern knit in his brow, the telling tremble in his wrists. 

“It is more for your sake, than it is mine. I’m sorry.”

They both hold very still. He becomes viscerally aware of the way his heartbeat sounds in his own ears, a steady, growing pound, and the curiosity he’d been idly scratching at before flares to a full-blown case of septicemia. He feels it crawl up his arms, trickle down into his chest cavity, and Claude knows he’s in trouble when the questions creeping up his throat.

So, maybe now Claude’s _ more _ than a little intrigued. Is it really such a bad thing?

The answer: probably not, but he should be careful, regardless. 

And it’s not as if he has anybody to tell. Except Hilda. Lorenz might count, if Claude’s ever in the mood to tell him a truth and not a carefully concocted half-lie – which is unlikely. The next step is a logical, objective course of action anybody might take. Boil down the water to get to the solution underneath. If you want the feral cat to come closer, you first must earn its trust. 

“Alright, sure.” He pours all the reassurance he can into his next smile. “It’ll be our little secret.”

He smiles small, the sound of his words clipped but warm. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

The silence stretches. A _ thanks _ and an unspoken, casual _ you’re welcome, _but he still hasn’t made a move to leave yet, and the shadows casting over the strong line of his jaw are so sharp it’s almost distracting. Not that Claude’s looking at it – because of course he isn’t. Not even a little bit.

“In that case, then–” Claude receives the reward of another small smile, a laugh laced with self-directed exasperation. It’s still a nice laugh, regardless. “I hope to…see you around.”

Claude, for all that it’s worth, keeps smiling back. 

“Me too.”

Claude watches his back until he reaches the door, and he hears but doesn’t see the screech of its hinges as it wrenches open and shuts behind him. The sun’s almost set now, only light pouring out from the ridge of the mountains, red and gold dribbling through a jagged set of teeth. At last, Claude allows his posture to falter, curling his knees up to rest his chin. He should climb down soon, scrounge dinner from the mess hall and crawl his way into bed. A bed that isn’t quite his yet. A home he isn’t quite sure he wants.

_ As if dwelling on it will do you any good_, he hears Judith tease. Yeah, yeah, she’s right about most everything in the world, but–

Suddenly, he’s very tired. Eyes falling shut with heaviness, bones hollowed out and aching kind of tired. Like a rag wrung dry and empty.

It can’t be but forty five seconds later that he hears the chapel door open far below. Twilight dampens the colors beneath the trees, but the last streaks of sunlight still hit the top of his head like solid gold. His walk is brisk, heading east. The opposite direction Claude had come from. His pace quickens to a jog, and he holds it for a few strides before he skids to a stop.

He stops, and sprints back to the base of the chapel wall, directly below Claude’s feet. 

“I’m sorry,” He calls up, across the green, voice a tenuous balancing act. “But may I know your name? You never told me.”

Claude’s grinning, even if he’s too far away to catch it. “You never asked!”

The scene is humorous enough to draw it out of him, this strange shadow of a boy standing at the bottom of a tower, calling up in an ardent attempt to learn his name. What else can Claude do but laugh?

“So, I don’t know.” Claude continues. “_May _you?” 

“I would give you mine in return.” 

Claude laughs, because maybe it’s a bit of a game now. “I would hope so! It’d be a shame if you didn’t.”

A breath of silence. He backtracks a few steps, and from here Claude can see him better, see how he teeters on the edge of the sidewalk when he says:

“Dimitri. My name, that is. It’s Dimitri.”

"_Dimitri,_” he says, the exhale of a whisper just for his own ears to hear. Just to see how it fits in his mouth. He pitches his weight forward, the stone crackling under his fingers, carving bumpy landscapes into the soft of his palms.

“It’s Claude!” His voice is clear and sharp when he sends it down around a smile. “My name’s Claude!”

-

It isn’t until he’s back in his room, enjoying the satisfaction of pulling old sheets over the corners of his new bed, that he pulls his phone from his discarded jacket’s pocket. He flops back, letting his body bounce with the bedsprings. The messages are only an hour old.

_ From: Lorenz [19:02] _

How was your flight?

_ Weird, _ Claude hears the logical part of him say. _Since when does he care? _

It’s strange, but his fingers are already tapping out a long, half-truth about how the toddler singing a song from _ The Sound of Music _ to the whole plane reminded Claude of him as a kid – a joke he’s sure Lorenz will find appropriately incorrect and un-funny.

The second text sits a little better in his stomach.

_ From: Hilda <3 [19:13] _

how’s campus without me?

bored out of your mind yet?

The strange restlessness of Dimitri’s petal-veined fingers comes to mind. The crumple of his white t-shirt around his hips, and his unusual name for middle of nowhere mountain country. Dimitri.

Claude shoves the images out the backdoor before it can gain any traction. The jet lag must be _ really _ starting to get to him now. Nestling into his pillow feels like touching the hand of God, or some other primal, world-creating entity he doesn’t quite believe in. 

With that thought, he rolls over, and texts Hilda back.

_ Me [20:20] _

never been more unentertained my entire life, frankly

take an earlier flight? for me? pretty please

The thought bubble pops up almost immediately – flickers once or twice before it’s replaced with:

_ From: Hilda <3 [20:20] _

would if i could :( holst wants to get in one last hike together before i enter into exile. annoying but not like i can say no

he calls it ~sibling bonding time~ but frankly it’s more like “let’s go out and get horribly bitten by mosquitoes together” time

he says hi btw <3

_ Me [20:21] _

hey. at least this year we’ll be in exile together! tell my favorite big brother right back at ya ;)

_ From: Hilda <3 [20:22] _

ur so right. and don’t even think i’m passing on the wink to him u weirdo

i mean i could try. but i think the effort involved might kill me

_ Me [20:24] _

you’re the worst y’know that?

god i miss you

_ From: Hilda <3 [20:24] _

i know :) and what would u ever do without me

just two more days!!!

i miss u tooooooo


	2. the friendship scale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Claude reunites with old friends, meets a few new ones, misses his cat, and has a hard time wrapping his mind around the concept of Dimitri Blaiddyd - not necessarily in that order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all - thank you so much for all your kind words, i'm really at a loss here. i never thought this fic would get the kind of reception you've all given it so! wow. all i can say is...thank you. 
> 
> i'm thinking updates will be on fridays from now on (i say as i post this @ 11:47 pm on a friday hehe). i can't promise it'll be weekly, but! fridays will be our update day. 
> 
> anyway y'all wanted hilda........so let's just get right to it then, huh

There’s an unspoken rule among the powerful, ultra-wealthy they seem to think everyone else outside of their pretty glass social sphere is unaware of: 

First impressions are hardly ever the truth. 

Sure, _they’re everything_, according to any parental or authority figure in history – but first impressions hardly ever tell you what there really is to know about a person. It’s rare to encounter anyone who always fits into the box you try to cram them in when you first meet, even rarer that they don’t try to go directly _against_ what you think they might do. There’s always more than meets the eye, some extraneous limb or piece of baggage that prevents them from meeting one’s every given expectation.

The perfect example of this is Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, who, with all due diligence, is arranging Claude’s collection of paperbacks in color order, from smallest to largest despite (or perhaps _in spite_ of) Claude’s protests about how he has a _system_, and Lorenz is going to _ruin it._

A lie, obviously. But this late in the game, Lorenz should know better.

When they were little kids, it wasn’t so different. Left in the living room while the adults went to smoke cigarettes and sip scotch on the balcony after dinner, Lorenz would attempt to give him lessons on tableware placement and napkin folding as they played house. The key word here being: _attempt. _More often than not, Claude would eat their chocolate sundaes with his soup spoon, and spend entirely too much time attempting to press the napkins into flimsy paper airplanes, much to Lorenz’s consternation and eventual rage. Hilda, for her own part, would nap through the worst of it.

Lorenz should know better, but he sure acts as if he doesn’t, and the game is all too easy to play when Claude knows exactly how his opponent will blanche at the sight of any untidiness, smooth the tuck of his dress shirt in and set to work. The trap is an easy one to lay – especially unintentionally, as had been the case here. Lorenz had taken one look at the still-taped boxes, the mountain of books spilling over his comforter and under his lifted bed frame, and wrung his boney hands in absolute dismay.

Claude simply hadn’t gotten around to any of it yet, and, well– 

Lorenz is already elbow deep in one of Claude’s few remaining closed boxes, and who would Claude be to deny himself the simple luxury of some extra help unpacking?

“You could at least _pretend _you aren’t enjoying this, Claude.” 

He looks over the top of his worn, well-loved copy of _East of Eden_, head hanging over the side of his bed, legs crossed and resting on the wall. It’s a special position he reserves for when Lorenz insists on keeping him company, for providing maximum annoyance. 

“No one’s forcing your hand, y’know,” he says. 

Lorenz jerks his head, the horrible, sharp line of his bangs slicing across his forehead. “As if you leave me much choice! Look at this. Look at this room. The _state_ of you.”

Claude, for all his virtues, does not look around to see the mess Lorenz is undoubtedly gesturing at. “I’ve never lived away from home before, in case you forgot. We can’t all be as well-adjusted and anal retentive as you, _Sir Lorenz_.”

There’s a shuffling of pages, a dull _thunk_ as a stack of books hits the floor. 

“Both of those things have absolutely _nothing _to do with the fact you’ve been practically sleeping on your new textbooks as if they were pillows, or the fact you seemed to have acquired an admirable collection of the mess hall’s cups in the three days since your arrival. You’ve also been using a single cardboard box as both a closet and clothes hamper and, frankly, I’m not sure which one is worse.”

Claude flips over, rests his chin in his hand. He holds his page open between two fingers, a little surprised at what progress has been made at his bookshelf. The long, thin line of Lorenz’s back is straight as a rail, legs tucked under himself to perch on his heels. His socks are a muted, safe-for-work shade of tan – a color that reminds Claude, vaguely, of something his grandfather might wear. 

“Aw, Lorenz, that’s so sweet. It’s almost as if you’re actually _worried_ about me.”

“Me? Worried about _you?_” Lorenz doesn’t acknowledge him, reaching into the box at his side. Another pile of books smack the floor with a bit of extra gusto. “Perish the thought.”

There’s a soft knock at his door, which he’d left slightly ajar to maintain the illusion of keeping up with the _no closed doors with guests_ rule – a catch that came with a co-ed dormitory hall and a staff not so ignorant to the certain workarounds their charges may find to bend it. The rule applied to everyone – no matter their gender identification. There would be no attempted _canoodling_ on campus premises, as one of the resident assistants had put it, his mustache quivering with distaste at the word.

If Claude, once again, were to be asked, he’d say it seems arbitrary and borderline invasive – but no one had yet, so he’s keeping up appearances whenever Lorenz invades his sanctuary and insists upon leaving his mark on it. Because otherwise Claude would be thinking about the words _canoodling_ and _Lorenz_ in the same sentence and–

His nose wrinkles with the effort. Nope, no – not thinking about it. Execute the idea and move on.

The second time around, the knock is more of a dull, flat slam. Claude opens his mouth to answer only to be promptly cut short.

“I’m coming in!” Hilda calls as she pushes the door open just enough to slide her compact frame through. Her hair’s silky and freshly re-colored, spilling over her shoulders in an undulating, cotton candy wave. 

“You really shouldn’t do that,” Claude gives her a smile. “What if I’d been changing?”

“Hey, I warned you this time.”

“Yes, the whole seven seconds you afforded me is definitely more than enough for-”

“Okay, fine I’ll _wait _from now on. But, this time, seriously? With Lorenz in the room?” She ruffles her fingers through the aforementioned’s hair as she strolls further inside, to which he gives a polite squawk of indignation. “Doubt it.”

She bounds over and throws herself across the unoccupied half of Claude’s bed, landing facedown. Claude goes back to skimming his book, and they can’t be sitting in silence for more than two minutes when Hilda kicks her slippered feet in the air and says, all pillow-muffled:

“Claude.”

“Hm?”

“I’m bored.”

“That’s nice,” Claude says, not unkind. He flips a page.

“_Claude._” She turns her head. “I said I’m _bored_. Let’s go do something.”

“But I’m busy,” he says, not really reading so much as simply seeing the words printed on the page. Because it’s not that he doesn’t want to get out of this room – he does, very much so. He’s itching for it. But part of Hilda’s fun is making her actually _work _at something every once and awhile.

“Busy doing _what_, exactly?” Lorenz chimes, his voice light, the syllables of an accusation poised on the tip of his tongue. He’s tapping the pointed edge of _Sense & Sensibility_ on the flat of his palm like a gavel. Claude squints at him. _Don’t ruin this._

Hilda turns on her side, props her head on a bent elbow to look between the two of them. Claude realizes all she has on under her black zip-up is a very expensive sports bra. 

“I’m reading.” Claude finally says, sure to keep his tone a careful neutral shade. “Clearly.”

“Clearly,” Lorenz grumbles.

“Of course you are,” Hilda adds, rolling over to jab her elbow into his spine.

“Far too busy to be going off and messing up my first class education before it even begins. Clearly.”

Hilda scoffs. “Oh, please. Not like we’ll be breaking any rules.”

“That is what you always say though, isn’t it?” Lorenz says, almost demure, and the sigh that Claude lets loose disguises the laugh underneath.

Hilda frowns. “Lorenz, would it kill you to not be a stick in the mud for like, four minutes a day?”

“I beg your pardon? _I’m _the stick in the mud?”

“_Okay_,” Claude says, before the train derails past the point of no return. “Compromise. What about food, then? We all like food, remember that?”

Lorenz sniffs. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.” Then, as a considerate afterthought: “And neither of you two should be either. We only had lunch a few hours ago. Learn a little moderation.”

“It was a _late _lunch, okay? So _what_ if I’m hungry again?”

He folds his hands in his lap, and _turns his nose up_. Literally, flicks his nose straight into the air and says, “If you say so.”

Sometimes, Claude really has a hard time believing Lorenz is a real person, who simply exists as he does without a single consequence. Sometimes, he really does want to grab the pointy edge of his hair and pull, just to see what his reaction might be. Not that he thinks it’s fake, but it really is quite horrendous, and Claude is still trying to process how it had gotten from point A to point B in the handful of months since they’d last seen each other. New haircut aside, Lorenz isn’t so infuriating as he is mildly annoying, and oftentimes there are others who are more than willing to do it before Claude has the time to contemplate taking action. Hilda, as is her want, is more than willing to knock him down a peg. 

“Oh, _okay_, Mr. Snooty Pants, be that way.” She wraps a lock of hair idly around her forefinger, curling and then tossing it back behind her shoulder again. “Let’s go, Claude.”

“Woah, woah, hold on there–” He starts, holding a palm up in surrender.

Hilda sits up, perching on the edge of his bed. She pats his arm. “Come on, I’m hungry. Lorenz can stay here and play maid if he wants.”

“_Excuse me_?”

“I mean–” Hilda flips her hair behind her shoulder. “Am I wrong?”

“Regardless of whatever kind of roleplay Lorenz is into and, no judgement passed on my end–” Claude lifts up his book. “But like I already said, I’m busy.”

She squints down at him, and the moment of prolonged eye contact is so nostalgic, Claude can’t help but smile up at her, just a little. She must know he’s just having a bit of fun now - and that’s always been the key difference between her and Lorenz. Hilda knows how to play back.

She rolls her eyes. “Well, _somebody_ has to come with me to get dinner.”

Claude raises a single eyebrow, amused despite himself. “Someone _has_ to?”

“Yes. Lorenz, you know how this works! I can’t go by myself, and both Dorothea _and_ Sylvain are taking late planes in tonight, so–” She sweeps her arm out, placating. “Here I am.”

Claude turns on his side, to give her a properly scrutinizing look. Had this been her intention all along? When Hilda notices all she gives him is a shrug, and it may be as close to a _you caught me!_ as he’s ever going to get.

“Here you are, indeed,” Lorenz mutters before turning back to the bookcase. His toes do an odd scrunch in his socks. “As opposed as I am, you could’ve simply asked me to-” 

She sighs, an impressive and childish display when she keels over and drapes herself over Claude’s back. Her hair is in his mouth. “You’ve been escorting me for the first _three years_ of high school, Lorenz. Don’t you want to give Claude a chance?”

“Are you saying I can’t even come with you?”

“I thought you weren’t hungry?”

“I–” Lorenz stops, clearing his throat. “That does not mean I cannot enjoy the company of my _friends–”_

“Well of course not, silly! Just, I don’t know, wait outside then while we eat? Since you’re so above being hungry.”

“You’re joking. You _are_ joking right, Hilda?”

Hilda’s giggling. _Giggling. _Claude closes the book with a snap, already pushing up onto his elbows. “Alright, alright, you win. Let’s go.”

Hilda raises her fist, victorious, as he hauls himself up, reaching over his bedside to fish through his still partially-packed shoe box. Much to his own surprise, Claude manages to find two shoes that match with relative ease. Hilda swings to the door, peering down at Lorenz as he scrambles to slip on and tie up his patent leather dress shoes.

“Well, Lorenz? Hurry up, then,” she says, all the levity in the world.

“Oh, those are rich words from _you _of all people-”

They all file out as Claude grabs his lanyard, swiping his glossy new student i.d. card through the door’s lock pad to the background noise of their age-old, traditional bickering. _Friends that fight like siblings_, as he’d heard Holst say once, around the mouth of an artisan craft beer bottle. He thinks maybe he wasn’t supposed to have heard it, but as an eight-year-old with a steel trap mind, there was little he missed at all those _company get togethers_. Much to his parents, their friends, and all of his many babysitter's chagrin. 

The mess hall’s all old red brick like the rest of the school, long and low on the far center side of campus. The walk from the dorms is a lengthy one, compared to most of the other school buildings. Claude had scouted out what his schedule and his subsequent time restraints might be the day before, and there’s nothing too bad, aside for the long trek from AP Physics in the science building to one of the classrooms nestled on the chapel’s third floor for Art History. The irony of the two being built on opposites sides of the school gives him a good chuckle, at least. Along with a stitch in his side. 

But right now, they’ve got plenty of time, with Hilda’s meandering pace setting the standard he and Lorenz both must adhere, as they always have. They take the stairs, dodging around steady streams of traffic through the hall. It’s the final rush of move-in week, before the last boxes are shoved in and parents fly back to their homes in the hills, child-free until Christmas, if they’re fortunate enough. 

That’s one thing, he supposes, he might’ve gotten right. In all the last-minute decisions and planning, no one had accounted for sending anyone to keep an eye on him. His parents in Turkey, Judith in Paris and Nadar too busy trying to wrangle the execs in their absence; it’d all culminated in Claude packing his bags under his own discretion. In many ways, he’s glad for it. 

He thinks of his hamper/closet, an idea his mom would find entertaining, his dad somewhere between slovenly and pure laziness. He’s sure they’d have been helpful in their own respective ways, but who needs parental guidance on organizing when he has a perfectly good Lorenz right there?

They pass a boy on the second floor receiving an earful from his mother about how he’d packed his clothes on top of his uniform, and the brief but intimate details about how difficult it’ll be to iron out the wrinkles before Monday. 

Case in point. 

The air is just starting to cool as they push outside, sunlight growing wane with each day they push further past summertime proper. There’s almost more people outside than there are in, some hauling boxes, some flat screens, some just milling about relaxing, or waiting for instruction. The fresh air perks Hilda up enough to stop dragging her feet, skipping the extra few paces to walk between them. 

It doesn’t take long for Claude to notice they’re garnering attention. There’s a few waves as they walk, a couple of _hey Hilda!_s thrown in for good measure. The wildest part about it? Hilda’s actually waving back. Small waves, sure, but her voice carries enough to be heard with clear intent when she gives a _hey_ back. People _stare_. There’re even a few curious looks at _him_, in particular. It’s all a bit surreal. When he glances across the top of Hilda’s head at Lorenz, he doesn’t so much as take notice. 

So, maybe first impressions don’t mean much of anything at all. He need not rescind the statement for it to be true, but-

But. Having Hilda Valentine Goneril on your arm the first day of senior year may not be a poor place to start.

He leans down to say in Hilda’s ear, “You didn’t tell me you were so popular.”

She half-smiles up at him. “Aw, that’s sweet of you. But around here, _everyone’s_ popular, basically. Small school, y’know?”

Her words are an eerie, familiar echo. A common sentiment, then. 

“And don’t be silly, Claude.” She threads her arm through his. “There’s plenty of stuff I don’t tell you.”

“Oh really? Like what?”

“Well what would be the point in telling you _now_.”

“But _Ms. Goneril_,” he shakes his head. “Are you not my dearest, hottest friend in the entire world?”

He catches the eye roll just in time. She bumps his hip with her own. “Nice try.”

“Worth a shot,” he says, glancing up over Hilda’s head at Lorenz again, who appears quite taken with the view of his shoes upon the sidewalk. Claude adds this as another bullet point on the amount of times Lorenz’s refused to look him in the eye, right next to the list of instances he’s caught Lorenz looking at him with a vague, uncomfortable look on his face. It’s all a little odd – even for Lorenz. 

“So, _Mr. von Riegan_,” Hilda says, her hand coming down from yet another wave. “Excited for tomorrow?”

“For my first foray into proper snobbery? I’m positively _elated_, Hilda.”

She muffles her laughter into his arm. Lorenz says nothing.

_Alright. Definitely, officially, more than a little odd._

As if taking a cue, Hilda lurches away to bump Lorenz’s shoulder. All she gets in return is a look and a frown. She says, almost dreamily, “The first week’s always the best, anyway. It’s all downhill from here.”

“Those’re some words I never thought I’d hear you say.” Claude says, playing along. 

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I wish school never had to start at all. But at least for the first few days we don’t have to _do _anything. It’s all syllabus reviews and icebreakers and stuff.”

“All I can request is that neither of you make fools of yourselves tomorrow.” Lorenz breaks his silence, in typical fashion. It’s like he hadn’t even been holding his tongue at all. “Or is that too much to ask?” 

“I don’t know if you’ve really got room to talk, Lorenz. I mean, you came back to school with–” The tilt of Hilda’s smile sours as she gestures to his hair. “–_that_.”

“_What_?” Lorenz’s eyes widen to an almost comical degree, much more his usual self. “You don’t like it?”

Claude skips a step forward to look him straight in the face when he says: “Lorenz, can I be honest with you? If the barber did that to my hair, I’d set fire ants loose in their underwear drawer.”

Lorenz’s jaw drops. Hilda cackles. The world tips back into equilibrium, and Claude can’t help but think, in a small voice: _maybe this year won’t be so bad after all. _

-

“So, here’s the thing-” Hilda’s fingers curl up his arm. “I think I need to give you a run down about some stuff before tomorrow.”

They’re nursing their drinks on the walk back, two-thirds of them full of savory southern comfort food, one-third still sipping his club soda like it needs to last him all night. Lorenz is, as in all things he does, nothing if not brutally stubborn. 

“That’s-” Claude quirks his mouth. “Ominous?” 

“I just wanna make sure you’re prepared, is all.” She combs through her hair with the tips of her fingers, Diet Coke can rattling. “Just, think of it as a little favor. No strings attached.”

“You do know how I love things with no strings.”

“Exactly! So.” He hears Lorenz grumbling, but Hilda doesn’t so much as bat a single one of her long, fake eyelashes. “Good things to know: Mr. Eisner is the best. Either one actually, because there’s two, and they both teach Calc AB and BC. Either way, you score. The younger one is our club advisor, but he also coaches like, a _ton _of the sport teams, too, so we’re kinda free to do whatever we want. It’s pretty great.”

Lorenz, much to his own credit, says nothing. Claude had been waiting for it, expecting it, even. He does clear his throat, however, with an appropriate amount of disapproval. In the privacy of his own head, Claude’s snickering.

A little of it ends up seeping out when he says, “Are you sure that’s not just _you _doing whatever you want and leaving the rest to everyone else?” 

“First of all, don’t be rude. Second of all, it’s a _mutual understanding_. I do my one story a year, Mr. Eisner doesn’t kick me out, and I get to put the newspaper _and_ yearbook on my college apps. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.”

“I’m sure it is,” Claude says, wondering if that’s how the rest of the club members feel about Hilda’s _arrangement_. Lorenz’s silent huffing and puffing throughout this whole exchange may just be telling enough on its own. 

“Also–” Hilda looks up at him this time. “Just…a warning. Sorta. Some of the kids here can be a little bit–”

She trails off, lips pursed. Claude lifts a brow.

“Mean?” He provides. “Funny? _Bizarre_? Are they going to sacrifice me in a blood magic ritual _Dragon Age_ style?”

“I was going to say _intense_ to be nice, but you’re right. Bizarre might be a better word.” 

Claude nods with an understanding he doesn’t quite possess yet. “Hm. This bodes well!”

Hilda’s lip catches beneath her teeth. Her glance flees to meet Lorenz’s for but a brief moment before it comes back to Claude. “Well, there’s really just _two _you need to watch out for, in particular.” 

He clenches down, squeezing her hand between his forearm and ribs. “Am I allowed to ask why this time?”

“You can ask,” she says, her shoes swishing on the sidewalk as she slips from his hold and glides ahead. “Doesn’t mean I’ll tell.”

“More of your secrets, then.” He raises a brow. “I thought you were doing me a favor, not trying to keep me up all night in a cold sweat before my first day.”

“Oh, fine, I was just kidding.” She relents with ease. “What do you wanna know?”

It’s at this opportune moment that Lorenz decides to open his mouth. “Hilda, are you really sure you should be–”

“Lorenz, full offense, but nobody asked.” 

“I’m simply unsure if you should be contributing to Claude’s…less virtuous tendencies.” 

“That was an _interesting_ pause.” Claude knocks Lorenz’s pointy elbow with his own. “Almost as if those qualities aren’t the exact reason you love me, Lorenz.” 

“On the contrary. In fact–”

“Can you like, hate-flirt some other time, when I’m not standing right here, please?” Hilda glances at them both, sidelong. “Thanks.”

“Hey now,” Claude says. “It’s all _friendly_ on my end. Can’t speak for _Mr. Snooty Pants_, though.”

“As if–” Lorenz starts, stops, an unreadable twitch flashing over his face. He looks vaguely nauseous, pallid and tight-lipped. His voice comes out thick when he speaks.

“I don’t– I do _not_ appreciate the nickname, I’ll have you know.”

The silence that follows isn’t at all awkward - well, it is, but Claude refuses to acknowledge it as such. Acknowledging it would mean thinking about how Lorenz isn’t really protesting any of this, which goes beyond _a little odd_ and straight into _what alternate reality is this?_ territory. 

“So, Hilda can call you that, but not me?” And he doesn’t intend it to come out as a tease, but his tongue slips into it with an all-too-practiced ease. 

“That is entirely beside the point. I don’t appreciate it _either_ way, in _any _way or capacity. Furthermore–”

The sigh Hilda lets loose is positively explosive. But, per usual, it proves to be as effective a Lorenz-silencer as always, so Claude can’t complain. “You two are so _exhausting_ sometimes.”

She doesn’t even sound annoyed, or bothered in any earnest sort of way. Just that vague, detached sense of exasperation she gets whenever Claude and Lorenz’s tug-o-war gets a little out of hand. This is how it’s always been – and likely the reason why, as kids, Hilda spent as much time napping on the couch as she did while Lorenz fussed over how Claude held his fork.

Now, though, the picture is a bit different. Lorenz has taken a rapt interest in his shoes once again. Claude dodges Hilda’s attempts at eye contact, feigning as much innocence as possible. Because as much as Claude would like to dangle all of Lorenz’s weird behavior back in his face, it may be better left as arsenal for another day.

“_As I was saying_,” Hilda picks up the original conversation thread again as if they hadn’t dropped it thirty steps back. “There are two people you need to keep an eye out for around here: Hresvelg, and Blaiddyd.”

Claude takes a moment to picture the names, preserve them in his head for future use. Something in them sounds familiar. “What’s so special about those two in particular?” 

Lorenz appears to take this moment as his time to shine. “The Hresvelgs are one of the school’s founders. They make up for at least half the board and provide a third of our yearly budget. The other two-thirds come from the Blaiddyds and your grandfather, of course. I believe not a single child born into their family hasn’t attended in its entire three hundred year history. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, really. They have voices present in all the Ivy Leagues across the country, not to mention other prestigious universities and internship programs.”

Hilda squints at him out the corner of her eye. “And _I _thought you weren’t contributing to this conversation.”

“Am I not permitted to provide educational information, now?”

“That’s not even the _important_ stuff about the Hresvelgs.” She looses another sigh, considerably less astronomical in scale. “Edelgard is the oldest daughter of the current company head. She’s in our grade, and she’s cool, I guess. Just don’t try talking politics. Or economics. Or philosophy. Basically, anything you’re not ready to debate for the next two hours.”

“Is this supposed to be discouraging?” Claude grins. “She sounds like my kinda girl.”

“Eugh, I always forget you’re like, _into _that.”

“I do enjoy myself some good discourse, if that’s what you mean.”

That earns him another eye roll. “That isn’t the point _either_, Claude.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “What _is_ the point, then?”

Lorenz fixes him with a look, expression placid aside from the scrunch in his brow. “You’re a _von Riegan,_ is the point. One of their biggest competitors.”

“And Edelgard isn’t the type to just ignore something like that,” Hilda finishes. “Probably. Who knows, actually. I can never tell what she’s thinking. In her case, _intense _might actually be the best word. Just don’t be surprised if she approaches you and wants to talk, like, _'the future of our family's flourishing __business relations' _or something.”

It’s a bit strange, being reminded of his own last name. Not his, but the one tacked on at the end of his own like it somehow belongs there, when before his mom would deny, with marked vehemence, anything to do with her maiden name. Sure, it’s listed as part of the traditional,_ lengthy_ title printed on his birth certificate, but nobody in their family acknowledged it until his grandfather’s call came at the end of last January. Like an extraneous piece of frill fraying off the embroidery of his existence. His mom hadn’t cut that tie completely – but she’d come very close.

And now he’ll carry it with him on every class roster, down the halls, under his picture in the yearbook. Nobody will know him as anything else except _Claude von Riegan_. The thought tingles, a little unpleasant sharpness behind his ribs.

This isn’t like him, to run a rut over things he knows serve no purpose (_but isn’t it?_ half of his heart says). Hilda and Lorenz are still talking in the midst of his mind’s brief wandering, and it may have stayed like that all the way back to his room if Hilda hadn’t roused him back with a startling jolt of a word.

“It’s not like _Dimitri_ will do anything about it, and–”

There’s more to the sentence, he’s sure, but the name pulls his focus to a pointed arrow aimed at Hilda’s casual shrug around it. She may as well have pulled a rubber band taut and snapped it against his cheek.

“Wait,” he says, putting a hand up. “Rewind. Start again.”

She jerks her gaze back to him, mouth opening once in must-be confusion before she draws it shut. Even Lorenz is giving him a funny look. “Were you even listening?”

Not entirely true, but if that’s what Hilda wants to believe he isn’t going to stop her.

“Nope, just a little hard of hearing, that’s all.” Claude lets his grin stretch wide this time, a marked play at sincerity. “What were you saying?”

Hilda doesn’t appear wholly convinced, but what can he do? He’s just one man, and for all her faults, Hilda Goneril’s never had an issue with his caged up words casting the shadow of their bars around them. It’s part of the reason their friendship works, has functioned as it has since they were grown enough to understand that there are some things you hold in the hollow of your chest, and don’t let out.

“Alright, but listen up this time,” she grouses, pinching his earlobe between her sharply manicured fingernails. “There’s just one thing you really need to know about Dimitri Blaiddyd.”

So he _hadn’t_ misheard. His ears are still in working condition, which is good news. Claude doesn’t know what the bad news is yet, but he’s a feeling he may be about to find out.

And Hilda, in this moment, unknowingly does the worst thing Claude can think of next. She brings the soda can to her lips, and takes a sip. It’s the longest sip in human history. He realizes she’s decided to finish the whole thing, still a third full, in one long gulp.

_Don't be hasty, _he reminds himself. _Don’t make assumptions, _the same little voice says. And says, and says. It doesn't take long to realize that’s not going to be sufficient enough to convince him not to dive headlong into this assumption like the shallow end of a pool in the dead of summer. 

Just think about it: how many people could there possibly be named _Dimitri_? _Here?_

A strange anticipation chews on his stomach. He wonders if this is what dogs feel when their owners taunt them with a particularly tasty-looking tennis ball. His ears perk, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. He’s sure if he’d a tail, it’d be whipping Hilda on the back of the legs like a blunt force weapon.

It’s at times like this that he’s exceedingly grateful mind readers don’t exist. Well, maybe they do – who’s Claude to say otherwise, right? But now, in this particular instance, he’s glad his friends’ve never showed a proficiency in reading his thoughts – it could be problematic for more reasons than one, all dog metaphors aside.

Because then Hilda might know when she speaks next all Claude’s thinking of is Dimitri’s fingers, bloodied cuticles and all, disappearing to hide behind his back. 

They’re about to turn the edge of the administration building when Hilda finally, _finally_ crushes the can with a metallic crinkle, and says, with a hiccup, 

“The thing is, Dimitri’s-”

They skirt around the corner, and with a strange sense of familiarity, Claude collides with something warm and solid. There’s a flutter of scattering paper skidding across the ground, a dull pain as someone stamps on his toes. 

“Ow-”

“I-I’m sorry, I’m so _sorry, _here let me–”

“No, here, let me–”

In a moment of either absolute idiocy or shared brain-cell genius, they both bend down. At the same time. The _thonk_ of their foreheads together is something straight out of a cartoon. Truly, Claude should know better than to have tried it, and he only has himself to blame as both he and his fellow head-bonker clutch their temples in agony from their respective crouches on the cement.

It’s all very disorienting for a second, but he’s determined not to lose track of his faculties in the jumble. At least this time he’s not being lifted a few extra inches off the ground. That helps. What _doesn’t _help is the throb in his forehead starting to move over his head like a cracked egg. Or maybe his head _is _the cracked egg – although the former is definitely the preferred alternative.

“Oh.” That’s–? Lorenz’s voice?

Ah. Leave it to Lorenz to not allow Claude a moment of peace. _Of course_ Lorenz is the first thing he hears upon returning to the realm of reality. Claude blinks away the film over his eyes, spots of blotchy color still smattering at the edges of his vision, and when he looks up he first catches Lorenz, eyebrow raised in faint surprise, and then Hilda–

Hilda’s stopped. Like – full stopped: not moving, not speaking. Claude wonders for a moment if she’s even so much as _breathing_. She doesn’t hold the position for long, less than a handful of seconds, but it’s a stutter to her step a little too long to go unnoticed. Her eyes are fixed on their new friend, widened but shuttered on the inside, like she’d pulled the curtains closed all tight not to let the light through. When she exhales, the sun glints a bright red off her hair as it spills forward over her collarbone.

Claude turns his aching head to follow her stare and look at–well, it may be more accurate to say _figure, _as opposed to a person. Her clothes are long, loose and dark, face turned down and buried in her knees. Her long skirt piles up in little rivulets on the cement, the thin tips of her fingers peaking from her sleeves pale and shaking around her shins. 

“Marianne?” Hilda says, faint at first. Nothing. Claude’s not sure if _he’s_ breathing, now. 

“Marianne!” Her voice spikes, almost breaks on the edges. She moves in a flurry to place a palm on her back, the thin scrunch of her arm. “Oh my goodness, are you okay?”

The black, lacy lump of fabric, apparently also known as Marianne, doesn’t move until Hilda actually touches her. She jolts up, looking very much like a young spring fawn caught in the flash of a semi-truck’s high beams. Her gaze ticks between them all, recognition in Hilda and Lorenz, puzzlement when it comes to rest on Claude. Her eyes are quick to return to the ground again before flickering back up, tentative.

“Oh…Hilda?” 

“Yes, it’s Hilda! I’m Hilda! And you’re Marianne! Do you remember that? God, I hope you remember your own name, I don’t know what I’d do if–” 

“I-I’m fine.” Her voice is breathy, but gets stronger with every word. “Really. I’m alright.”

Hilda worries the line of her lip, pausing before she bites down on it. “Are you sure? Claude’s got a pretty thick head, you know.”

“Such kind words, Hilda, thank you,” Claude grumbles, digging his fingers into his forehead.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. At least the look she gives him is marginally more apologetic when she pats her other hand on the top of his head. “You’re okay too, right Mr. Numbskull?” 

“Oh _haha_, very funny.” 

“Hm.” Lorenz says, reshuffling the last stray papers between his hands. “No quippy comeback. Maybe you did hit him a little hard, Marianne.”

What little blood there is left in Marianne’s face drains, pale complexion turning downright sallow in the warm afternoon light. However, this apparent pain she’s caused him appears to be enough of a motivator to bring her gaze up to meet his. The shadows beneath her lashes are darker when she looks at him like this head on, the soft brown of her eyes so dark it almost blends to black. Marianne’s jaw is quivering when she parts her lips to speak, but he beats her to the punch.

“Hilda’s not wrong.” He knocks on his head and regrets it almost instantly. “I’m pretty sturdy. As long as you’re okay, I’m okay. No harm done.”

“Really?” She sounds unsure. Claude, in a rare instance, is inclined to agree with her. His head is _pounding_.

It’s worth it though, to see the frown lines of her face soften when he says, “_Really_ really.”

“But I…” Her words lose their will only halfway there, ending in a soft trail in the air. “Okay.”

He stands, offers his hand. Marianne looks at it for a moment like he’s grown an extra arm, but ends up taking it at Hilda’s subtle nudging. She accepts the pile of papers from Lorenz with a quiet _thank you, _clutching them close to her chest.

“Where were you going in such a hurry, anyway?” Hilda jabs her hands to her hips. It’s not demanding, per say, but Claude feels Marianne tense like an echo on the air.

“The…The faculty office. It’s just some paperwork for Coach Charon.”

“What?” Hilda says, like she wants to stab the word. “They’ve already got you running errands? The school year hasn’t even started yet!”

“No, no, it’s fine. I volunteered to take them.” 

Hilda squints. “You sure?”

“Yes–!”

“Alrighty,” Hilda smiles, her slippers scraping when she slides a step closer to Marianne’s side. “You won’t mind if I come with you, then?”

“Um.” Marianne blinks once, twice. Her fingers clench around the papers’ width. “If it isn’t a bother–”

“Of course it isn’t!” Hilda’s quick to answer as she bumps their shoulders. “Let’s go.”

It’s almost as an afterthought that she turns to Claude and Lorenz. “Sorry boys, you’ll have to find your way back on your own.”

Lorenz sighs. “I believe in that case it would be _Claude _who might have an issue.”

“Right! I leave him in your very capable hands, my dear Lorenz.”

“_What–”_

But Hilda’s already skipping away, her hold on Marianne’s loosed wrist secure as she makes her escape.

“I’ll text you later!” She calls, looking at Claude. Her smile’s wide and bright, and there’s something genuine there he can only just _hear_ above the pounding of blood in his skull. It sounds suspiciously like a warning bell.

“Got it,” he says, waving them off with a raised hand. “It was nice meeting you, Marianne.”

He thinks there’s a quiet, muffled _you too_ as she’s towed out of earshot – but then again, that might just be the wind. Or his own wishful thinking, it’s really anyone’s guess. His head still aches like he’d smashed it against a bag of bricks. And apparently _he’s _the one with the hard head.

“I didn’t know she was coming back so soon,” Lorenz says, seemingly to no one. Just to himself, in all likelihood, but he’s never been very good at the whole _keeping your opinions to yourself _thing. 

Claude takes a long step to lean into Lorenz’s personal space. This does not go unnoticed – his spine visibly _stiffens_. Claude almost chuckles, but he knows he’d feel it in his nasal passages, and frankly? Not worth it.

“So. Who’s Marianne?” Claude whispers. 

Lorenz looks down at him, sidelong. “You should strive to get to know people _honestly_, Claude.”

_That’s no fun, _Claude doesn’t say, because while Lorenz doesn’t sound disappointed (yet), the firm edge under his words leaves no room for discussion.

Claude sticks his tongue out at him. Lorenz pulls a face. They both watch the happy bob of Hilda’s head as the pair grows further and further away, until their silhouettes are just shadows around the turbulent green churn of branches.

“Although I will say, Marianne is one of Hilda’s closest friends.” Lorenz’s puzzlement is clear. “Has she not spoken of her to you?”

Claude hums a long note in place of answering the question. Lorenz never knows quite what to do with that response. It’s a tried and true method in getting him to stop asking questions, one Claude’s employed many a time. It’s quiet, for a period. So _blissfully _quiet. The tension is just starting to ease its constriction around his skull when Lorenz says, hand raising as if to touch his face,

“Is your head truly alright?”

Claude _groans_.

-

He drops Lorenz off at his room on the ground floor first, dodging around the few remaining stragglers still toting their belongings down the hall. It’s a long process – between Lorenz’s copious reminders, telling _Claude _to tell _Hilda_ to drop her uniform off for ironing on top of his persistent gripe to _“please, for the love of god, tell her to set an alarm this year, I can’t keep waking her up every day now that she lives on a different floor”_, and other such comments on Hilda’s sleeping habits. 

This is all offset, of course, when Claude peeks his head in Lorenz’s room with a sly comment about the pristine order of his underwear drawer, and Lorenz hesitates not a moment more to usher him post-haste out the door. Claude makes his escape long before Lorenz has any chance to construct a proper reprimand or rebuttal. All the better, really.

The pulsing ache in his head is just beginning to peter out as he swings up the stairs, tossing his lanyard up and catching the jangle of keys between his fingers. They’re all just spares in case the card system goes down one day, but carrying them at least provides a bit of easy entertainment between commutes.

They also provide a good distraction for keeping thoughts of Lorenz and Hilda, as well as their respective, newfound baggage out of Claude’s head. On second, fleeting not-thought, he supposes the baggage isn’t so much _new_ as it is new to _him. _It’s a bit of an uncomfortable reminder. A reminder that, no matter how long or how well he knows them, there are pieces of them that don’t fit into his boxes.

He takes a deep breath, starts swinging up his second set of flights.

It’s not too late. He could still pack this away for later. But something tells him he shouldn’t – like leaving a glass of water unattended when there’s a cat in the room. Nobody likes it when you’re sitting down for a nice, leisurely chat, or pushing someone down into the sofa to kiss their neck, and then the cat shatters glass all over the new, polished wood floors, and everyone has to pitch in and clean up. Glass is messy when it breaks. It hurts. Nobody likes that. Claude hauls open the heavy, third floor door with a heave.

Now he just misses his cat. That train of thought was even less productive than he thought it had the potential to be. 

_You’ll never have a clear head if you keep running yourself in circles. _He really wishes Judith wasn’t so _right _all the time.

The fact he’s walking back to his room in quiet solitude may be the universe giving him some kind of sign. A chance moment of introspection. Claude’s never opposed to some good ole fashioned self-contemplation (all within reason, of course), but in this case he’s inclined to think less about his own quirks and more the ones of those around him. That is, he _would _be inclined, theoretically.

Theoretically inclined, if he wasn’t so…_distracted_.

That’s the most annoying part of it all – Claude isn’t even _interested. _Not so much drawn to as he is vaguely considering of the things that would normally have him chasing little scraps of information all around the school for more. He’s not interested in his new classmates, or the way Hilda’s usual self, unmotivated and self-serving, had done a full 180 turn at the single nervous tick of someone Claude’s never heard two words about. Then there’s Lorenz and whatever he’s holding behind his back, determined to keep out of Claude’s sight. Whatever _that _is.

All Claude knows is he’s not touching it with a fifteen foot pole. Nope. Not without some reasonable precautions and a surplus of escape buttons at his disposal. And he can’t talk to Hilda until he sees her again because she knows how to sniff his snooping out from a mile away, and–

Actually, scratch that. It’s not that Claude isn’t interested – he’s very much equal parts perplexed and fascinated by the whole situation, with maybe a little sliver of horror thrown in whenever Lorenz says something that could be construed as _complimentary _towards Claude’s character.

But he’s not nearly as taken by it as he is by the words Hilda never got the chance to say, before they turned the building edge and he came as close to a concussion he’d like to get anytime soon. That pause of apprehension he’d held with baited breath while Hilda downed the rest of her Diet Coke in a form of metaphorical cockblocking Claude’s never had the pleasure of experiencing before. _Information blocking _might be the better word – but it’d be a lie to say he’s not thinking a little bit with his dick, in this particular instance. And he’s never been a huge fan of the Coke Brother’s corporate hold on their politics and economy under the guise of _Family Fun Brand, _but this? This might be the last straw.

Because it’d be nice, theoretically, if Claude could stop thinking about the lean curve of Dimitri’s bicep. He’s just saying. It’d be nice, if he could go to bed tonight _not _plagued by the question of “What’s the One Thing You Should Know About Dimitri Blaiddyd?”

One thing. Just _one_. His head gives a single painful pulse in response. _Fine, _he thinks up at himself. _I’ll spare you the trouble for now._

The dorm hallway is emptying out, everyone either out with reunited friends or bidding farewell to parents and guardians out on the lawn. Behind some unclosed doors floats indistinct conversation, but many are shut tight and quiet. Claude’s room is the last on the end, farthest from the stairwell and elevator. For the whole three days he’s been at Mach Prep, his corner of the dorm has been silent as a morgue. A little lonely, if he’s being honest. Peaceful, sure, but he can only listen to the hum of the air conditioning over his own breathing for so long before he starts feeling a bit uncomfortable with the silence. 

But this time, as he makes a turn down the last stretch of hall, there’s the marked sensation of _commotion_. Nothing major, from what he can tell as he makes his way down. Nothing too crazy – although the handful of tipped over suitcases and empty plastic bins may not be a _good _sign, either. As he draws closer, there’s the distinct sound of an argument bouncing off the walls. It carries well. A little _too _well, unfortunately, and while it remains hazy enough now for Claude not to parse specific names or details, the tone is unmistakably fractious.

“_It’s none of your business–”_

_“I am your **father**, you cannot–”_

_“Yeah? And?”_

Claude realizes he could turn around at this point, go find a spot to kill time, or go back to Lorenz’s room, or the chapel roof, or–no, those last two are not options, actually, upon closer consideration. He could go _somewhere_ though, and just wait for his new neighbor to stop giving what sounds to be his own parent the tongue lashing of a lifetime.

But what would be the fun in that?

The door is swung wide open, which is fortunate in that Claude doesn’t need to strain his ears to hear, unfortunate in that he can’t linger around without attracting notice. The closer he gets, though, the less he thinks that may even pose an issue at all. In all likelihood, he’d be able to hear the argument loud and clear through the walls of his own room. It’s also becoming obvious the carnage of emptied out suitcase corpses spreads farther than Claude first though – there’s a few pressed up against his own door on the far side, too. 

The father exits just as Claude’s close enough to chance a glance inside. Surreptitiously. As one does. His head’s down, eye only flicking over to look in intervals. In a stroke of misfortune, the father’s half-closing the door behind him, blocking the rest of the view with his back. He’s well put together, in that _dad_ kind of way. 

“Are you sure you have everything you need? Did the dry cleaner send you back your uniform?”

A voice that sounds like it’s made of razorblades cuts straight through the door’s flimsy blockade. “For Christ’s sake_ yes_, how many times do I have to say it?”

Claude’s stepping carefully and quietly around the aftermath covering the hallway – or, at least he thinks he is. 

“Is this your room?”

The father’s smiling at him, all gentile, dark hair curling from where he’s pulled and tied it back. So apparently not quietly enough. Claude snaps on the smile he wears when adults come around with a practiced ease.

“Yes, sir,” he says, as he’d learn to speak around his grandfather. “Sorry about that.”

“No, I apologize. One moment.”

He moves to take hold on the boxes strewn around Claude’s door, of which there are five or six, only to drawback and reconsider. Probably a good idea, considering they looked to be packed to the edges of their tape with any number of sports’ team equipment, all of them labeled with something along the lines of _fencing _or _soccer_ or _baseball_. All of them save one – a single, long box with just the word **_SWORDS_**, written bolded with black sharpie in all caps.

_That’s…sure something. _

The father doesn’t give the boxes themselves much of a second thought, aside from the possible weight of moving them all on his own. Which, makes sense, in its own weird way. Claude watches as he turns, giving the door a knock.

“Will you help me move these last ones inside? You should come out and say hello.” The poor guy sounds like he’s run a marathon and still has the swim and bike portions to go. “It’s your new neighbor.” 

There’s a rustling inside. “No.”

“Come now,” he says, with a remarkable amount of patience. “Be polite.”

Silence. No response. Claude raises an eyebrow and stifles a laugh, because it’s hard not to be a little amused and a little pitying at the same time, but he settles his face back to schooled politeness as soon as the poor man turns back and gives Claude a weak smile.

“Here,” Claude offers in return, because contrary to popular belief he was raised to be a helpful child and therefore, a helpful adult. “Let me help.”

It’s in these next few seconds that Claude realizes the universe might be out to get him. In a good way – but a way to _get him _all the same.

From behind the door, a voice comes, careful and muted. “Rodrigue?”

Claude’s ears perk. It isn’t the same voice from before – its new, and familiar, and everything Claude simultaneously does and doesn’t want to hear. In a horrible betrayal, his body shivers in the sun-soaked hallway. _Shivers._ Both he and the father – Rodrigue? – have turned their attention to the half-open door. Although, Claude’s fairly certain it’s with a far different feeling.

The cadence carries over the edge when Dimitri peeks his head around and says, “Do you need me to help with anything? I–”

He sees Claude. It is remarkably obvious. Claude sees him, and the red of Dimitri’s ears brightens. Around the edge of the door, Claude just catches the freshly healing skin, all pink around his fingers.

_Well, _Claude thinks, with an odd elation, suddenly having to bite his smile back from breaking his face. _Speak of the devil. _


	3. the name paradox

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claude remembers something old, learns something new, and loses his tie (in ascending order of importance). He still misses his cat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise, bitch
> 
> bet you thought you'd seen the last of me
> 
> so to answer any possible questions: no this fic isn't dead, yes i definitely plan to finish it, i am VERY sorry it took me 10 months to finish this chapter, but the good news is that chapter 4 is already over halfway done and plotted, as are 5 and 6. 
> 
> yes the chapter count went up. no i don't want to talk about it. i've finally accepted this story could very well span over 100k! it's fine! i'm fine!
> 
> if you're a returning reader from when this was first posted also know that i love u <3 dmcl still got us by the throat a year later and i think that's powerful. thank you so much for reading, and hopefully i'll see u next time!
> 
> (i've done a very cursory read-through for typos, but this is mostly unbeta'd. sorry for anything u might catch!)

He’s going to be late.

In Claude’s defense – it’s not _exactly_ his fault. Most of the time, sure. Fine. He won’t take the fall but he’ll shoulder responsibility for the shortcomings in his own personal life, no problem – but this instance? In particular? Not quite.

It all comes back to one unfortunate shortcoming in the list of other shortcomings titled, _things-fallen-by-the-wayside-when-dropping-everything-and-moving-across-the-ocean: _

The school forgot to send him his tie.

Which in and of itself, is a minor problem. The _major _problem is, he’d been so convinced he’d seen it in the bag his uniform came in that the only logical conclusion he could come to at the time, was that he’d lost it. Again, wouldn’t really be a problem if the packet of paperwork and codes of conduct they’d sent him over the summer hadn’t made it _abundantly _clear the tie of their uniform is to be worn at all times while in attendance of classes during normal school hours.

Because the tie sets off a _string_ of issues, see. A little like the butterfly effect, but considerably less glamorous and definitely less life-altering. More a moth than a butterfly. Claude doesn’t have an issue with bending rules – hell, he’s pretty sure his earrings alone are a dress code violation, but asserting yourself as a troublemaker is something best done quietly, in his opinion, maybe even subliminally if you’re clever enough. And walking into class without his tie on, _without_ any prior connections that’re substantial enough for him to feel a sense of security in, is as good as declaring himself a rule-breaker from atop the teacher’s desk. Which he doesn't mind – it wouldn’t be exactly untrue. But he’d like to have some say in how it happens.

Is he overthinking this? He might be overthinking this.

Still, makes him wonder what must’ve happened to make them institute such an absurd requirement. Is he starting his first day of senior year, or attending a business summit? But that’s a line of inquiry for another day.

Another day, when his room isn’t turned inside out and he’s not about to be late to his first day at Prestigious As We Are Pretentious Academy. He fumbles to buckle his belt, switching his debating brain over from the tie debacle to which pair of shoes he should wear. No point wasting time on something he can’t change at the moment – better to get lost in the merits of whether red or black Nikes clash more with the blue-green plaid of his uniform pants. 

He’ll figure something out. He always does. Claude’s worked with less than the 30 minutes he has before his first period AP Literature class. He looks back and forth between the shoes, still packed in the jumble of their box. Good thing he won’t be letting _Lorenz_ into his room anytime soon. Lorenz would probably insist on the dark leather loafers Judith had bought him for his 17th birthday, because he’s boring and practical and a menace to anything that gives Claude joy in life. He’d probably present them up in professional, fancy shoe-holding fashion, and then jump whenever Claude had to touch his hands to take them, and really Claude’s already sick of seeing it, when he makes that face like–

_Eugh. Okay, never mind. Too early in the morning to be thinking about Lorenz. _

Claude sighs. He tugs on the red pair, and with no less sense of trepidation, a final pat down of his pockets for his keycard and phone, Claude opens the door, and steps out into the hall.

-

Here’s the thing: Claude would like to think himself a pretty big believer in the idea that nothing is preordained.

People aren’t born with destinies to fulfill, or purposes far beyond their own comprehension, none of that classic _maybe we were never in control_ _in the first place! _rhetoric that writers love to justify their decisions with. Nothing is ever set in stone. People will be people, and that’s almost always a little more complicated than we’d all like to assume. It just feels a bit blame-shifty, which is fine, if there’s a good reason for blame-shifting to happen.

There usually isn’t, though. Anyone who argues the opposite probably enjoys playing devil’s advocate in film class, or setting small piles of garbage on fire for fun. Literally and/or metaphorically, take your pick. Claude’s always up for a little anarchy, but there’s a big difference between meaningful destruction and straight up arson.

The metaphor’s starting to get away from him but – here’s the point. While it’d be nice to believe that everyone has a path, the unfortunate reality is that while fate might make no mistakes, _people _certainly do. Most of the time, that seems a good enough thing to believe in as any.

That being said (and said _quite _emphatically, at that) – there’s no denying it’s a strange coincidence that once Claude realizes he’s looking at Dimitri’s face, that Dimitri’s looking back at him, and that they both have 2.7 seconds _max _to recover before the man named Rodrigue will begin to look between them with a growing degree of concern. The connection Claude makes almost comes as an _afterthought, _in spite of it all. Dimitri’s sweatshirt is a patriotic shade of dark blue, _GARREG MACH LACROSSE 2018 _emblazoned in blocky bone-white lettering down the front, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Claude’s eyes keep falling to the words on the sweatshirt – whether it’s because they’re easier to look at than Dimitri’s face, or he’s mildly fascinated with how the illustrated lion seems to be grinning directly at him, he’s not sure. He’d rather not know. He can feel Dimitri staring at him like a tangible thing.

Claude tries not to keep his gaze _anywhere _for too long, as a general rule, but it takes him an embarrassing amount of time to realize the _other _door down the hall is ajar, behind Dimitri’s head. He hadn’t been paying it much attention before, too distracted by the yelling and the boxes and, well. Everything.

Claude looks harder, and his suspicion is only confirmed when he sees _Blaiddyd_ typed on a scrap of paper pinned to the door behind Dimitri’s head, in size 18 Times New Roman. It’s laminated – because of course it is. The door Dimitri peeks his head around now bears another name in the same format: _Fraldarius. _

Thankfully, the universe doesn't give him time to dwell on it, for now.

“Ah, Dimitri, thank you.” Rodrigue gestures at the pile of boxes blocking Claude’s door. “If you don’t mind.”

Dimitri’s eyes tear away, and Claude can see the gear shift happening as he takes a step forward, scrambling to throw it into D3 to make it up the mountain. “Oh. Yes, of course.”

Both Dimitri and The Dad(trademarked) move together, picking their way over the otherwise empty boxes to the ones at Claude’s side, beginning to pull and shuffle and stack with quiet efficiency. Dimitri casts him one final, fleeting glance before he bends to pick up the infamously labeled **_SWORDS_** box.

_No way. _Claude would raise a brow, but he’s not sure Dimitri would get the hint. _Really?_

There’s no way the guy he’s casually, _sort-of-maybe_ attracted to is going to be living two doors down. _Comics_ work like that. Movies. Books, of a particularly trashy variety, can pull it off sometimes, too. Claude can think of a few (now neatly organized and color-coded on his new shelf, thank you) just off the top of his head that do. He’s read each at _least _twice but has never once imagined what it’d be like to live through such a mortifying cliché. So mortifying Claude is sure that if this were a movie the reel would play in slow motion, capturing every horrible micro-expression ticking over Dimitri’s face in stunning high definition.

Which would be a lot, considering the longer Claude looks at him, the less sure he is of what Dimitri’s thinking. Gone is the broken-open honesty, the sense of optimistic caution. It’s like walking through a museum of color only to find yourself suddenly face to face with a blank wall. 

“Here,” he says, once his tongue decides to stop sitting like a useless piece of meat in his mouth. “I can help.”

Claude bends down and grabs the edge of another long, rectangular box. There’s no label, just a scrawl of black sharpie that reads **_30-4-1185_** across the top flap. Whatever it means for whatever’s inside – it’s heavy. The effort it takes for Claude to lift just the half closest to him is more than he guessed.

“Ah,” and that’s Dimitri’s voice again, from somewhere over his head. “Allow me.”

Before Claude has the time to process what the words even mean in context the box is lifted, one-armed from his grip. Claude decidedly does _not _gape when Dimitri hoists the box under his left arm, the sword box beneath his right. Claude hadn’t felt the weight of a sword before, but by the sound of it there isn’t just one in there. If he were to guess there’d be at _least _ten, and that’s keeping it conservative. As to _why _anyone would need ten swords let alone more when at boarding school is probably the better question to ask here, but the answer’s clearly right in front of him, plain as day. But even considering whether the swords are made of real steel or not it must be–

Heavy. The answer is heavy. And here Dimitri is picking it up like it’s _not _at least ten swords in a box, like this is just a thing everyone can do, like he’s made for it. Between this and the way he can climb vertical surfaces with little handholds to speak of is…impressive. Claude’s decides to hold on any further comments, for the time being. Observations should be had when his biceps are visible, preferably at a distance where Claude is able to see them without any obvious ogling. How many Claude’s could Dimitri bench press at a time, he wonders?

For now his guestimate is three. Maybe four. Okay, five _tentatively._

But it’s question probably better pursued later. Later, when Dimitri smile isn’t all rounded at the edges with a level of discomfort Claude isn’t sure how to gage. Dimitri doesn’t even seem to be breathing, when their eyes meet for such a fleeting second Claude thinks he might’ve imagined it.

“Excuse me,” he says. Claude steps aside. His back almost hits the opposite wall, his keys jangling in his hand.

And that’s it. That’s all that happens.

Claude watches with little interest as Dimitri carts the boxes inside. There’s some shuffling on the other side of the _Fraldarius _door, some exchanges Claude doesn't stick around to hear. As soon as Dimitri’s out of sight he makes a dive for his own door handle. He doesn’t even try to fish his keycard out of his pockets. That’s what the physical key copies are for, anyway. _Exactly _for situations like this. He doesn’t move _too _fast – he even manages a nod and quiet _thank you_ to the Dad(trademarked. It’s the hair, he thinks) just to help sell it.

Claude knows how to be inconspicuously polite. He’s had a long time to get good at it.

As soon as he’s inside he flips the massive deadbolt, patting the door a few times for – well, he doesn’t know why. Sometimes he has to make sure the wall is sturdy enough before he can breathe again. Sometimes he just needs to feel something solid.

His keys clang when they hit his bedside table. His cheeks puff out when he sighs, and Claude lets his face go slack, tries his best to keep it from folding back up again. A handful of thoughts battle for superiority, and they’re all so goddamn loud Claude isn’t sure where to begin.

_Gotta learn to turn down the volume in there, kiddo._ And Nader – while not possessing the same success rate as Judith – is also usually just as right.

Claude splays out on his floor, not wanting to get in bed quite yet. He’s had enough new information to last all week.

Or, more like the dangling of _possible _new information right in front of his nose before it’s snatched away. Like the universe had decided the _carrot-and-stick _method is the best new way to keep Claude humble.

_Well, _he can’t help but think as he’s greeted with the now-familiar view of dorm room ceiling. _It’s working._

-

Before he continues, let’s state the obvious:

He doesn’t _know_ Dimitri. He was never under the illusion that he did, or, he _thinks _so anyway. He hasn’t made that rookie mistake in a while. People are always too messy to fit neatly into boxes.

Yet the surprise at seeing Dimitri shift is something he runs over and over and over again. As if remembering exactly when it happened, every little minute detail, could somehow give him a hint as to the _How_ or the _Why. _It surprises him just how _surprised _he really is. Hilda’s words come back to him in an echo: _only one thing you really need to know. _Claude thinks of Dimitri’s hands: healing, peppered with old scar tissue. Every awkward flinch, every fleeting glance from under his lashes.

There’s something there. Claude doesn't know what – but he sure as hell is going to figure it out.

And if he’s maybe (and only _maybe_) a little hurt that Dimitri actually made good on their mutual promise to pretend not to have met before, if it dampens what little hope he had of making a true friend before the school year began?

Well, that’s between him and the cruel machinations of fate.

When he walks by Dimitri’s closed door the following morning, he doesn’t so much as give it a glance.

-

He meets Hilda at the dorm’s main downstairs entrance approximately twenty-four minutes before they’re to report to their first period classes. Twenty-four minutes, and still no tie.

She doesn’t see him at first, which gives him the chance to poke her in the ribs mid-yawn. She wheels around with a startled yelp and much more speed than the aforementioned yawn suggested possible, swatting at him.

“_Claude,_” she grouses. “It’s too _early _for that.”

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he says, skirting around her attempt to kick him in the knees.

She squints at him, her eyeshadow a perfect blend of orangey-sunset pink, lined with a black wing as precise and sharp as a knife. Highlight bounces off her cheekbones like flecks of crushed glass. Even her lips are lined and lip-stained for the occasion, a kind of taupe-y, matte red. From her ears dangle golden hoops, rose pink teardrop pearls nestled in the middle.

Never let it be said Hilda wasn’t willing to put the effort it – when it came to things she wanted, anyway.

“You’re so _lively_. I thought you weren’t a morning person?” She says, very much sounding like _not a morning person_ herself.

“I’m not.” Claude shrugs. “Where’s Lorenz?”

“He forgot his dictionary, the like–” Her arm waves, as if a hole’s been punched and she’s beginning to deflate. “French to English one? Anyway, do you know when he woke me up this morning? _Seven. Thirty. _Claude, I don’t think it should even be legal for people to be awake right _now_ let alone then._”_

Claude foregoes pointing out the fact that Lorenz forgetting his French dictionary for _the first day of school _is not only the most ridiculous thing Claude’s heard all week, possibly all month. It’s a candidate for Most Supremely Foolish Thing he’s heard all year, right up there with the fact he’d uprooted himself a month ago _by himself_ and is now hundreds of miles away from everything and most everyone he’s ever known in his eighteen years on earth.

Yeah, he’s not letting that one go – not anytime soon.

Claude half-smiles at Hilda when he says: “And just how did you _ever_ survive such an _ordeal_?”

“I _didn’t_, clearly.” She closes her eyes and collapses against Claude’s side, clutching his arm. “I’m going back to sleep until he gets back. How does he expect me to do this five days a week? I’ll die, Claude. I’m not built to live like this.”

“Hey, you’re the one who asked him in the first place. Seems like you sealed your own fate.”

“I mean it. I’ll die. I really will.”

Claude hears Lorenz’s disparaging noise before he sees him, strutting from down the first level hallway like a suburban mom speed-walking on her way to a morning class of hot yoga. She’s late, by the way. That’s important information to make the comparison work.

Alright, maybe that’s a little mean, even for him.

“Hilda.” Lorenz’s voice carries down the hall. “Hilda, we have a situation.”

“Yeah, I _know_. When’re we taking you to a hair salon?”

Claude can see the eye roll from fifty feet away. The clacking of his shoes on the sleek floor only increase in speed as Lorenz approaches.

“Be serious for a moment. I know that’s hard for you, but please.”

“Alright, alright, but what’s–”

“Have you heard from Yuri recently?”

Hilda shrugs, her shoulder bag rising with the movement. “How recently? Last time I talked to him was in Amsterdam when I went with Holst in like, June? Why?”

“Did he happen to say anything to you about, oh, I don’t know, _not coming back for first semester_?”

“_Oohhhhh_,” Hilda says, as if she’s just realized something important. “Wait, you didn’t know about that? I thought he told you ages ago?”

Lorenz throws his hands up in defeat. Stress radiates off him like radioactive chemicals from nuclear waste. Or, wait, is that his cologne? Is Lorenz wearing _cologne_?

“No, he didn’t tell me until,” Lorenz unlocks his phone with a click, scrolling furiously. “7:59 this morning!”

Hilda pats his shoulder. If it’s her attempt at commiserating, she’s failing quite miserably.

“That’s rough, buddy.”

Lorenz pinches the bridge of his nose with such ferocity he might squeeze it off.

He hasn’t even _looked _at Claude yet, which – it’s weird, right? He was already being weird before, but this edges into new territory of _unknown Lorenz behavior_. Even when they fight, Lorenz doesn’t just _ignore _him. He can never help himself. That’s their _shtick. _

“Morning,” Claude slips in. He smiles, and he _knows _it’s genuine because he doesn’t have to make up his mind to do it.

Lorenz only then looks up from where his pointed, slender nose is buried in the bright light of his phone screen. The white flash of it washes over his face from below while the dorm’s fluorescents blare from overhead. Somehow, this makes Lorenz even more pale than usual – a feat which Claude isn’t sure was possible until now. The look Lorenz fixes on him doesn’t linger for long, flipping his uniform-regulation blue and green plaid scarf further over his shoulder. He goes back to his phone.

“Good morning.”

And with that, he’s off.

Lorenz hardly pauses long enough for Claude to catch up, pushing through the doors and out into the dewy morning. Hilda – much to Claude’s mild surprise, is already strolling after him without so much as a second’s hesitation. He watches them walk out the door, side by side, for a single struck moment before he manages to follow. Lorenz is still talking, speaking as if he hadn’t just given Claude the coldest shoulder known since the Ice Age. Or like that time after Claude broke Lorenz’s favorite tea set when they were eight, the one he kept in this little floral-pattern, plush velvet box, and which also – just for the record – was a complete and total accident. In the end it doesn’t matter whether he broke it or not. What matters is that Lorenz had cried, and then he’d cried to his mom, and then there had to be a _conversation _had, and Lorenz hadn’t spoken to him for a whole eleven days after. Which sucked, because they’d only had the vacation house in Santorini for a few more years before his father sold it, and Claude had spent his last summer there lamenting on the floor in front of Lorenz’s shut door that he couldn’t go down to the docks to swim without him.

The point is: Lorenz doesn't _not _pay attention to Claude unless there’s a reason.

Hilda slows, waits for Claude to fall into step beside her. Lorenz stays a few strides ahead, still absorbed in whatever no doubt riveting conversation’s scrolling through his messages.

_Alright,_ Claude can admit it: maybe it _is _a little annoying.

“You do realize what this means though, right?” Lorenz calls over his shoulder.

Hilda hicks her bag up her shoulder. “What, for the club? I mean, yeah, sure…I guess?”

Claude clears his throat. “The club?”

“The newspaper.” Hilda waves her hand in the most lackadaisical way Claude can imagine. “Yuri’s the head editor. Well, he was, anyway, since we were what? Sophomores?”

“Wait. Leclerc, right? Part of the Rowe family?”

“Yep! Have I mentioned him before?”

“Sounds familiar,” Claude lies. He’s not about to tell Hilda he’s heard the name passed around along with his dad’s irritated side comments á la _bringing-work-home-for-dinner _conversation. Not important right now. Hilda’s talking again.

“I bet you’d really like him. You guys could do all that stuff smart people do together!”

“I’m sorry, come again?”

“Oh, you know. Stuff like…birdwatching? Or watching nature documentaries on PBS? Oo, or _chess_?”

The laugh bursts out of Claude before he has time to stop it. He’s almost sputtering, which he never does, and maybe that’s a sign his nerves are starting to get to him.

“Wait, do we both magically turn 76 years old if we meet? I think I might be a little offended?”

“Oh, don’t act as if I haven’t _personally _seen you do all of these things. Sometimes all on the same day!”

“That’s _completely _beside the point and you know it.” Claude shakes his head in – what? _Disbelief?_ _Horror?_ It’s not until Hilda looks at him that he sees the sharp focus there, narrowing in on him like a bolt of light.

_Is she…trying to distract me? _

He cocks his head at her. Hilda continues, once again, without seeming to pay much notice.

“Anyway, Yuri’s got an internship in Prague until December, so he’s not coming back until after winter break. Or, that’s what he said anyway last time I talked to him which, really was like, so long ago now. I don’t even know what he’s been up to lately, and with Yuri you never really _know_ until he’s like, telling you. He probably assumed _I _told Lorenz, or something.”

“Ah,” Claude tuts. “Rookie mistake.”

Hilda bumps their shoulders, her earrings catching the sun through the oaks when she shakes her head at him. Lorenz, for his own part, doesn’t appear to hear Claude’s pointed comment, or any other part of the conversation, really. They walk for at least another three more seconds before Lorenz swivels around, sending both Claude and Hilda screeching to a halt.

“Do you think Mr. Eisner already knows?”

Were Claude not still distracted by his mild annoyance, he’d think the tone of Lorenz’s voice could almost be categorized as _hopeful._ Claude shifts his weight, sniffs the air and – yep. It’s something dark and spiced, woody with an edge of sweetness. Definitely cologne. A cologne he’s _very _familiar with. _Interesting._

“Uh, probably?” Hilda says. “Pretty sure he’d have to tell admissions he wasn’t going to be, y’know, _admitted._”

“You don’t think Mr. Eisner would’ve picked a new editor already, do you? It isn’t possible. It’d be too rash not to consider all the options before choosing, of course. Teachers should be diligent about such decisions.”

“Yeah, of course.” Hilda’s grinning. “Don’t worry though, you’re definitely a shoe-in.”

“Well, _naturally_,” Lorenz says, with that pompous little laugh he gets. “I didn’t spend all those hours correcting Raphael’s margins for nothing.”

“Exactly! _Soooo–”_ Hilda’s rocking back on her heels. _Placating_. Claude knows the move. “Don't stress about it too much, okay?”

It works – after a moment. Lorenz flattens out his edges as he sighs, tapping his phone in a nervous rhythm on his sleeve. “Yes. You are absolutely right. Of course Mr. Eisner will make whatever he deems the best choice. I’ve texted both Leonie and Ignatz, by the way. I’m sure nobody’s told them the news, either, and–Claude. Claude, where is your tie?”

He’s going to have this conversation a lot today, isn’t he?

“Don’t know!” he says, grimacing in Lorenz’s general direction without meeting his eyes. _Two can play at this game. _“My guess is that Barbie threw up all over it and whoever cleaned it forgot to put it back in my suitcase. That’s just a theory, though.”

Lorenz makes a face like he’s said something offensive (cat vomit _isn’t_ offensive, by the way – she can’t help it if she’s nauseous). Claude swears he still catches an _unbelievable _muttered under Lorenz’s breath.

“Aw,” Hilda interjects. “Has she been having fur ball problems again? Poor baby.”

“Nah, she’s been doing great lately with the fur balls. Sometimes she just eats a little too fast, I think. Makes herself sick.”

“This is not good,” Lorenz is still muttering. “This is not good.”

“I miss her. Oh, we should see if your mom would Facetime her for us sometime!”

Claude would be lying if he hadn’t already considered it, even just out of sheer desperation. It still didn’t feel real that he wouldn’t see his cat again until they went home for Fall Break in a few months. He missed all his clothes being covered in a thin veneer of white hair already.

“_Infuriating_.” Lorenz starts walking again, now intent on ignoring _both _of them, apparently. “Infuriating, the both of you.”

“Come,” he calls over his shoulder. “If we go quickly we can make it to the office before class. Claude, you’re in C block, yes? Hilda and I are both in A, but we can manage if we hurry.”

Hilda clutches Claude’s arm as if she’s just been struck by something, pulling him along as her high heel penny loafers clack on the sidewalk. “Oh, shit. Yeah. The principle’s really cracked down the last few years about uniform stuff.”

Claude forgoes pointing out that she hadn’t even bothered to notice he was tie-less until now. That’s not a bone particularly worth picking with her, at this point.

So instead, he picks it with Lorenz.

“Did you memorize my schedule?”

Lorenz wheels around to face him.

“_No_?” He sputters, indignant. He doesn't elaborate. Claude lifts his eyebrows and Lorenz’s face goes predictably sour.

_Well, that’s more like it. _

The air’s beginning to warm up, the sun creeping over the red brick buildings in a slow crawl. They cluster closer together as they draw further into the campus proper. Small crowds of other students mill about around them. Hilda elbows him as a warning, which he soundly ignores, because frankly this – whatever _this _is – goes beyond being her business.

“_Really?_” Claude draws the _e_ out for good measure. “Because it kinda seems like–”

“Hey there_, Ms. Goneril_.”

The voice comes so close to his ear Claude near jumps out of his skin. Which is an unpleasant mental image already, and he’s already got the chills on account of merely existing for the past 12 hours.

What happens next almost goes too quick for him to process, because then Hilda’s squealing. Again, right in Claude’s ear – which isn’t too unusual, really, given what kind of friendship they have. But this squeal sounds is a bit different to any Claude’s heard before.

That’s when Claude sees him.

Now, as a preface, Claude’s known his fair share of boys. It’s a fair assumption to make that _most_ people have known their fair share, in fact. But there’s a specific _type_ of boy that tends to lurk in the upper echelons of the high school social hierarchy – and it’s a type Claude would like to think he knows pretty well. His experiences with them range from outright verbal abuse slung down the hallways between classes to unpleasant, sloppy-drunk flirting in the corner of a late-night family restaurant. Not mutually exclusive with the same ones, of course. Either way, when Claude does turn to look at their surprise guest, it’s with the strange realization that he actually _recognizes _him, which is a first in his entire week and some change since arriving at Mach Prep.

The hair is what gives him away: a dark auburn-ginger that fringes on being outright _red _but doesn’t quite make the cut. It’s styled into an appropriate mess, a short undercut freshly shaved at the nape of his neck. He’s grinning when Hilda twists around and throws herself into his arms, the smile falling down to a more tired notch when she squeezes his neck. At Claude’s side, Lorenz makes a noise that could only be described as _disgusted_.

However, he must confess: Claude hadn’t expected him to be so tall.

But perhaps that’s because the first and last time Claude had seen Sylvian Gautier was through the grainy, ethereal filter light of Hilda’s snapchat story as he chugged the entirety of a king cup after an apparent game of Ring of Fire, the “_VAIL SKII LODGE & RESORT_” logo covering most of his _un_covered chest. In the background, a Post Malone song entered its 4th bridge. The whole ordeal lasted a full ten seconds. Claude remembers this, specifically, because of how Sylvain had winked at the camera and the rest of the shot went full found-footage quality for the final three.

Present-day Sylvain Gautier has the key difference of 1) being dressed, and 2) approximately 500% less sloshed. From what Claude can tell, anyway. His coherency, and how he manages to catch Hilda, is a good argument for sobriety.

Sylvain lifts Hilda into the air in what must be a bone-crusher of a hug, if Claude’s ever seen one. She shrieks, in that high-pitched, affectionate way she does when she gets her way, and Sylvain’s mumbling something indistinct into her hair when his eyes meet Claude’s.

_Oh yeah, _Claude shoves his hands in his pockets, suddenly very aware of the way he takes up space. _This one’s trouble._

“Where’ve you _been? _How was LA!?” Hilda asks as Sylvain sets her down.

“Oh, it was great. Aside from absolutely everything about it. You know how it is.”

“When’d you get in?”

Sylvain makes a face. “Midnight on Saturday? Ingrid arrived at the same time so we just helped each other unpack yesterday.”

“Claude,” Lorenz sigh is blustery at his side. “We should go.”

As if on cue, Sylvain’s attention rounds on them. “Always got somewhere to be, huh, Gloucester? You weren’t even going to stop and say hi?”

Lorenz scoffs, taking a step further into Claude’s personal space. His eye roll is near transcendent. “Hello_, _Sylvain.”

Sylvain waggles his fingers, his smile closed-mouth and honeyed. “Hey Lorenz.”

“Your summer vacation went well, I take it?” Lorenz asks, because even through his obvious displeasure, the 17 years of social conditioning enacted by Father Dearest always win out in the end.

“Aw, yeah, of course. Filled with lots of – now, what would you call it? _Debauchery? Depravity?_”

“_Eugh_.”

“Oh sorry, do you prefer _fornication? Sordid rendez-vous?”_

“Sylvain,” Hilda grouses, but she’s laughing when she says it so it hardly counts.

Lorenz’s frown deepens, which is a feat in and of itself. “Are you quite finished?”

“I’ve got more if you want ‘em! What about…turpitude? Or indecency?” Sylvain says, and his smile’s all teeth. “Not that you’d know anything about stuff like that though, right Lorenz?”

_Uh- _Claude has time to think before the tension that’d been hanging above them drops in full force -_Oh. _

Granted, Claude isn’t privy as to how this dynamic usually goes (an idea he has a feeling he’s going to need to get used to over the next few weeks, but regardless). Even still, he doubts it’s supposed to end with Lorenz clamming up, shrinking away from them like he’s been physically wounded. If the look, albeit very _brief_ look, of confusion that quirks at Sylvain’s mouth is any indication. 

Well. Now’s as good a time as any.

“I take it you do know, then?” Claude meets Sylvain’s eyes for the first time in earnest. “About debauchery, that is.”

Sylvain doesn’t miss a beat. “You betcha. If you’re ever looking for lessons I’m here seven days a week.”

Claude doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction, because it was a cheap bone to throw and they both went for it anyway. He knows how these little back-and-forths go. But there’s something about Sylvain’s smile that scratches at the doors Claude keeps locked tight and closed. Whether it’s genuine or not, it’s too early to tell.

So, Claude lets himself smile back. Maybe even laugh a little, as a gesture of good will.

“Sylvain, right?”

“And you must be Claude,” Sylvain says, holding out his hand. It’s hot in Claude’s from being stuck in his pants pockets. “I’ve heard lots.”

Claude’s grin almost drops. _Almost._ Were he any less on edge than he already was, those words might be sending the alarm bells ringing in his head. But as it turns out, keeping a healthy amount of fear adrenaline in your system is good for appearing as if you don’t actually have fear adrenaline coursing from head to toe. Case in point.

Claude draws his hand back. “I wonder who your source could possibly be?”

In a stroke of what’s either luck or misfortune, Hilda chooses this moment to flips her hair directly into Sylvain’s face. 

“_Hilda,”_ Sylvain straightens up, sputtering, but safely out of hair-flip engagement range. Hilda begins to meander ahead, turning to walk backwards when she next speaks.

“May I remind you we have places to be. You know. Class to show up to for attendance points. Gym class to skip.”

In Claude’s blind spot, Lorenz gives a sigh. _Good to know you’re still with us. _

“Yeah, I’ve gotta meet Dedue and Felix in,” Sylvain glances at his watch, which is appropriately minimalist and expensive-looking. “Right now, actually. Whoops.”

“Go on, then,” Lorenz sniffs.

“So _cold. _Come on, we’re all going the same place, anyway.”

“Actually we’ve gotta swing by the office first.” Hilda jumps in, turning to walk right-way round once they join her. “Claude doesn’t have a tie, and I’m such a good friend that I agreed to go with him to sort it out.”

“Might I point out it was my–” Lorenz starts.

“No,” Hilda finishes.

Sylvain’s eyebrows raise past the hair falling over his forehead. If his eyes flicker over to Claude, it’s almost too quick to catch. “Well, this is new. Since when were you such a good samaritan?”

Hilda wrinkles her nose. “Uh, since _always?_”

“Not by my books.”

“Just because I’m not nice to you doesn’t mean I’m not nice _ever_.”

“Sure! Still not buying it.”

“Good call,” Claude adds.

“Well, hey. Here-”

Sylvain’s already undoing the loosened knot of his tie tucked lazy under his collar. He slides the smooth fabric around his neck, cocks his fingers out when he extends them Claude’s direction. The smile only just touches the corner of his lips. 

"Think I can solve your little dilemma without all the trouble," he finishes.

Claude lifts an eyebrow_. _He flicks his gaze between Sylvain and the tie in quick succession, ensuring he doesn't linger on either for very long.

“Aren’t you going to need that?” he says, leaving Sylvain’s arm hanging there between them.

Sylvain shrugs, strolling with all the confidence one might expect. “Not like the teachers really expect it from me.”

“Sounds like you speak from experience.”

Another shrug. “Maybe. Just a little bit.”

“Save you a trip to the office?” Claude must still seem unconvinced so Sylvain continues after another pause. “Hanneman’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong. But he’ll talk your ear off for half the morning if you let him.”

“Maybe I don’t mind being lectured?”

Sylvain snorts. “Depends. Ever wanted to learn about the nomenclature of mushrooms?”

Admittedly, Claude has not. But it definitely wouldn’t be the most inane subject he’d have invested time in.

Claude tries to meet Hilda’s gaze, but finds she won’t look at him directly. When she does spare a glance his way it’s with a shrug, as if to say _yeah, why not? _He doesn’t even _bother _trying Lorenz right now. Definitely not worth it.

“Nah, you’re right. I think I’m good,” he replies, the tie silken and freshly pressed when he takes it from Sylvain’s offering hand. Maybe he should’ve taken that as a warning sign, offhand.

Because this, in retrospect, might be Claude’s first in a long (_long_) list of mistakes.

-

The room for Advanced Placement Literature is situated at the end of St. Macuil Hall for the Arts, on the far east side of campus. It takes an extra handful of minutes to find it, because Claude passes the dance hall and three art studios thinking he’s in the wrong building before realizing that he’s just in the right place with the wrong mindset. Why not have an English class next to the choir room?

However, upon walking into the classroom itself, things begin to make even less sense. 

At first, Claude doesn't quite believe what he’s seeing. He stands in the threshold for what feels an eternity before getting his feet to move again. In reality it can’t be more than a few seconds, but the longer Claude looks around the room the further his nerves begin to fry at the edges.

It isn’t the fact he knows absolutely no one. He’d been expecting that, _prepared _for it even. Jump in the deep end with no floaties type deal. No, it’s more the fact that he goes in with an plan only to have it blown right back in his face.

He just hadn’t expected it to be his _teacher, _of all people, to throw him for a curb. Even if it is pleasant to see a familiar face.

“Last name?”

Claude clears his throat. “Riegan?”

“Ah, yes. Of course.” Mr. Chihol gives him a smile best categorized as _strained, _which is always a good sign. It’s barely 8:30 in the morning. “You’ve had enough time to settle in, I hope?”

“I think so, yes. Thank you.” Claude clips the smile into place on reflex. “And, thank you again for your help.”

Mr. Chihol waves a hand. “Merely part of my administrative duties. Your grandfather has been a wonderful patron. The least we could do is make arrangements for your arrival.”

Claude doesn’t mention the last time he’d seen his grandfather it had ended in pretending not to hear his mom cry half the night through their shared hotel bathroom door. Probably a little bit too much for _first day of school _mentorship building. He also doesn’t mention last time he’d seen Mr. Chihol himself had been in the rearview mirror of his BMW, staving off the worst case of combination altitude/car sickness Claude’d had since his family trip to the Alps.

“Still, I appreciate it. I know my grandfather does, too,” he says, still all smiles.

Mr. Chihol has gone back to idly tidying his already Spartan desk layout, a color-coded calendar half-highlighted beneath his left elbow. The smile he gives Claude in return seems a touch more genuine – but, perhaps that’s just wishful thinking.

“No assigned seats for the first week,” Mr. Chihol glances at down again at the attendance sheet for the briefest of seconds. “Sit wherever you’d like.”

Claude almost says _thanks _again, his tongue poised behind his teeth, but he saves it just in time. Besides, having free rein of the seven or so yet-empty desks isn’t exactly something he’s thankful for, anyway. 

So, he does what any well-adjusted gifted kid would do: assigns each desk a random number in his head, and runs it through an RNG. The RNG is just his brain, of course, but it does the trick well enough. The desk are nice – polished off-gray tops, sleek artisan wood stained chairs, all set together in pairs. None of them are completely empty, which is fine. What’s he here to do if not make friends?

_Don’t think about Dimitri, _he reminds himself, before he has even a chance to start thinking about Dimitri.

He settles on the desk set front row, closest to the window. The actual window seat itself is already occupied. So occupied, in fact, that its occupant doesn’t so much as stir from the communion they’re holding between their face, the desk, and the fold of their arms. A uniform jackets sits shedded inside out on the back of the seat, and a puddle of smooth, dark hair obscures any distinguishing features. All Claude can tell for sure is…they’re breathing. Or at least mimicking the motion well enough.

What’s tucked under their arms gives a little bit more of a story.

It still doesn’t tell _much_, of course. There’s a scattering of red ballpoint pens, a mechanical pencil with its eraser clean chewed off, and a stack of notebooks substituting in as some kind of pillow. The top notebook’s still flipped open, and even if most of its contents are obscured by its owner’s hunter green, uniform-grade pullover, Claude can make out the name chicken-scratched in the top corner of the page. _Hevring. _

_So, the universe has a sense of humor after all. _

“Excuse me,” he starts, leaning left to face his desk mate.

A grumble. A Birkenstock’d foot swishes out from under the desk. _A sign of life!_

“Sorry to disturb your…morning nap. It’s Hevring, right? As in Hevring Hall?” Claude asks, as if he’s speaking to himself. Then, to the approximate human-shaped lump beside him: “You ever get tired of hearing people refer to your last name as the place they live in?”

What he gets in response is entirely muffled by a mouthful of sleeve. Claude tilts his head to an audience of none.

“Sorry, what was that?”

A face emerges from the bundle of arms and pullover. His eyes are shut until he faces Claude fully, blinking and squinting into the fluorescents. There’s a fabric line shaped like a squiggly _e_ pressed into his cheek. Static lifts a few stray strands of murky hair straight towards the ceiling.

“Do you start all conversations like this?” his new companion says.

Claude makes a noncommittal noise. “Sometimes. Only when the other person has a building named after them.”

His seatmate seems to ponder this for a moment, turning the words over in his head. The Squint deepens for a split before softening down to benign placidity.

“Fair enough.”

Claude breathes again. “I try to be.”

A pause. Whatever Claude’s said or done, it earns him a sleepy half-smile. He also makes the discovery that his seatmate’s eyes are, in fact, quite a deep shade of blue, almost black around the edges. Like a bruise.

“I’m Linhardt.”

There’s a limp pullover sleeve extended out to him. As anyone might do with a modicum of logic and manners, Claude grabs the loose fabric and gives it a shake.

“Claude.”

“Von Riegan?”

“Yep,” he answers. Not even a wince this time. _Take that_. “One and only.”

“Hm.” Linhardt blinks at him. “You know, the auditorium has _your _name on it.”

“You don’t say?” Claude shakes his head in disbelief. Because even though he _did_ know their swanky new auditorium bore his maternal maiden name doesn’t mean he’s not still _shocked _every time he’s given a reminder. “_Huh_.”

“Right? You’d think they’d take our feelings into account, at least.”

Claude can’t help but laugh, just a little bit. Swept up in it all. “Exactly. At least could’ve asked for my help with picking out the carpet.”

“Mm. I like you.” The _o_ sound morphs into a yawn. Linhardt’s eyes fall shut. “Wake me up in fifty-five minutes?”

Claude considers the ramifications of this for a second before asking: “Isn’t that when class ends?”

“Yep.” Linhardt gives a small, serene smile before nestling into the fold of his arms on the desk. “Goodnight.”

And without further ado, the bell rings, and Claude’s first day at the Garreg Mach Preparatory School for Exceptional Individuals begins.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/snipmoonn) :-)


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